


Masks the Monsters Wear

by cyndisision



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel 616, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Canon Divergence, Canon Genderbending, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Consipiracies, Jossed, Loki'd, M/M, Not Phase 2 Compatible, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, SHIELD Agent Darcy Lewis, Shapeshifting, Slow Burn, Suicidal Thoughts, spy games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-06
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-20 01:51:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 24
Words: 96,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2410586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyndisision/pseuds/cyndisision
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not Loki who tricks an Avenger into babysitting, but Tony finds himself saving the God of Mischief again and again. Question is, does the trickster even want to be saved? Are any of Loki's many faces real?</p><p>Darcy didn't set out to uncover any interplanetary conspiracies, but those she can trust can't help, and those who could help can't be trusted. She got Tony into this, and now he's gone missing, it's up to her to find out why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Cruel World for Small Things

**Author's Note:**

> Loki sometimes appears in this story as an adolescent boy. There is also sometimes smut. These two things never happen at the same time. The existence/appearance of Young Loki is definitely influenced by my love of the Journey Into Mystery comics, and there are a few shoutouts to that series during the course of the fic, but I just can't make the story JiM/Young Avengers compliant, so consider it an AU where some facts of the comics universe are true.
> 
> I first wrote this after Phase 1, and then I got really sick, which meant I ended up putting the edits on hold for nearly a year. It diverges from canon pretty drastically after the Avengers movie.
> 
> Thanks to sev and Cleverqueen for beta reading!

## Tony

“Talk to me, Jarvis.”

“Approaching the co-ordinates now, sir.”

“You sure about that? There’s nothing out here but desert.” As far as Tony Stark is concerned, the less time spent in the desert, the better. It’s a thing.

“Nevertheless, the GPS signal indicates that Thor’s phone is less than half a mile from your location.”

“Maybe he dropped it again, flying over. You know what alien royal armor is lacking? Pockets. Hmm, I could maybe come up with a—wait, I’m seeing a light. Gonna land and check it out.”

Tony circles, touches down a couple of yards from the little trailer, and lets the faceplate of his helmet slide up, shivering a little at the sudden influx of cold night air. He snorts at the idea of Thor inside that trailer; he’s pretty sure the dude’s biceps are wider than the door. Come to that, he’d better knock gently, or he’ll put his glove through the flimsy particle board and aluminum.

He doesn’t get that far, though, because the trailer door flies open before he can raise his fist, and a familiar figure greets him. It’s way smaller and less blond than he was expecting, though.

“Oh, thank God,” says Darcy. “I was starting to think he’d leave before you got here! I mean, I can’t keep him tased the whole time and I don’t even know if it’s strong enough for that, and hey maybe when this is over you could hook me up with a sci-fi stun gun or something…” Her face is crinkled with worry, and she’s twitching with nervous energy, and there’s relief and frustration all mixed up in there.

That’s just way too many _feelings_ to hit him with right off the bat, and Tony has no idea what she’s talking about, so he defuses by joking, “Maybe I haven’t sobered up since last night, Thor, but you’ve gotten way hotter since the last time we met.”

And… nothing. Normally she’s good for some banter, has a mouth on her that can give him a run for his money some days. Now, though, no sass, no snark. Something really must be wrong.

“Friend Tony?” comes another voice. Darcy opens the door wider to let him see inside the trailer, and Thor’s sitting hunched over at a tiny table, hands wrapped around a mug of coffee. A slender dark-haired boy sits hunched opposite, feet on the chair, arms hugging his knees, and his back to the door. He doesn’t turn to look at the newcomer, doesn’t even move, everything about his body language sighing resignation and defeat.

Thor gets up, putting himself between Tony and the table, and says over his shoulder to the kid, “I must discover what my shield-brother needs of me. Worry not, I shall return soon.”

There’s no reply, and Tony can’t see around him to tell if the kid even notices he’s being spoken to. Something’s off here.

Thor maneuvers carefully between the miniature furniture and joins Tony and Darcy outside. He shuts the door quietly behind him, the way someone would if there were a sleeping baby they didn’t want to wake. He takes stock of Tony, puzzled and wary, and okay, yeah, that’s weird. “You should not be here, friend Tony. What made you come?”

A beat.

“I was hoping you could tell me that, big guy.” Tony feels like he’s crashing the confusion party.

“What do you mean?”

“You called, I came.”

“I did not—”

“Well, not so much called as texted, but the end result’s the same.”

“Nay, Man of Iron, I—” Thor pulls his Starkphone out of his pocket, fumbling it a bit in his large hands.

Tony swipes the phone and retracts his glove so he can scroll through the sent messages. “Here, see? ‘You are needed urgently in New Mexico.’ You didn’t send that?” He thumbs down to the next message, which went out six seconds after the first: ‘Bring your armor.’ “It sure sounded like an Iron Man emergency.”

“Um, guys…” says Darcy, too quiet for either of them to hear.

“I did not send that message.” Thor turns his phone over in his hands, frowning as if angry at its betrayal.

“That’s not good,” says Tony, his mind racing with all the possibilities: hackers, supervillains, magic…. (Yeah, yeah, he knows, but he’s resigned to calling it ‘magic’ until he’s figured out what it really is.)

“Guys…”

“What does this mean?” Thor wants to know.

“Don’t know yet. Here.” He starts pulling up menus on the phone. He can try and rule out hackers at least.

“GUYS! Hey!”

They both turn and look at Darcy, who stands between them with her hands in the air placatingly.

“It was me. I sent the message.”

Thor’s all wounded outrage. “Why would you impersonate me in this fashion?”

Tony scowls. “Gotta say, this is not up to your usual standard of prank; next time ask Clint for some pointers. I ought to charge you for my time—and not the discount Fury makes me give him. What if I had some important world-saving to do back in New York?”

Actually it’s an important bottle of scotch in Malibu, but that sounds less impressive.

Darcy rolls her eyes. “Trust me, if I pranked you, you’d know about it. No, doofus, if you just chill out for five seconds and stop interrupting me—”

“So why don’t you tell me what I’m doing out here in the middle of the desert—wait, why are _you_ even in the desert?”

“Jane moved her trailer out here when the town got destroyed. Plus something about light pollution—” Darcy interrupts herself with a hand-wave. “Not important. Anyway, so, I need a favor. Sorry for the bait-and-switch, but I figured if it came from Thor, you’d be more likely to show up, no questions asked.”

This is still making no sense. “You know I’d do you a favor, Darce. Shoulda just said.”

“No, see, if I’d done that, you’d have told the others.”

“Told the others?”

“Darcy…” Thor says, his frown turning from confusion to warning.

She squares off against the thunder god, which is pretty impressive given he’s about five times her size in every direction. “Just hear me out here.” Even more impressive, that gets him to back down, still cautious but willing to listen. At his nod, she continues. “Thor has to go back to Asgard, and he wanted me to look after… something… while he’s gone.”

“Something you can’t look after?”

“More like do not ever want to be left in a room alone with.”

“Very dramatic and ominous. And this is something you don’t want me to tell the others about?” He looks from Darcy to Thor, who now looks more chagrined than anything. “Well, is somebody going to let me in on the secret here?”

“It’s me,” comes a quiet voice from behind him, and if his suit were any less heavy he’d have jumped a couple of feet in the air. “I’m the secret.”

He’d forgotten about the kid in the trailer.

The adrenaline of the surprise has his mind racing in ten different directions, so by the time he turns around, he’s already put the pieces together: the strange kid, Thor’s protectiveness, certain illuminating facts he learned after the Battle of New York regarding shapeshifting powers...

His hand is raised, palm repulsor aimed at the source of the voice, before he can consciously think about it. “Loki,” he grits out between his teeth, and it’s not a question. “What the hell is he doing here?” he asks over his shoulder at the others, not taking his eyes off Loki for a moment.

The boy looks maybe thirteen or fourteen, all big eyes and tousled hair, sitting on the trailer step with a blanket around his shoulders and his bare feet tucked up beneath him, the very picture of harmlessness, but Tony’s not fooled. Kid or not, he’s a threat.

Thor strides over and kneels beside his brother, tucking hair behind his ears solicitously. The weirdest part is that Loki lets him.

“Brother, you should not be out here. It is cold, and you need your rest.”

“I’m not an invalid, Thor,” comes the response, but instead of snapping, it seems the most Loki can muster is a weary irritation.

Right, Loki is doing just fine, which is why he’s letting Thor tug the blanket tighter around him. It’d almost be funny, the way Thor is doting on him, how large he looks in comparison, except that Loki’s face is a disturbingly blank mask. Tony remembers a manically grinning Loki who took a brittle joy in throwing him out of his own window, a Loki who had at least a dozen emotions going on at any given moment—most of them probably fake, but still.

He pulls Darcy a few paces further off. “Let me get this straight,” he hisses at her, “Thor is going back to Asgard, and not taking Loki? Seems like that’s the best place for him.”

“Apparently it would be bad for his health to go back there.”

“And we care about Loki’s health why?”

“ _Thor_ cares about Loki’s health,” she corrects him. “I care that he was planning to leave a homicidal supervillain here for me and Jane to babysit.”

"Why is he even here?”

“Thor showed up a couple days ago saying Loki needs ‘asylum’. I told him to drop him off at the one in Albuquerque, but he did that sad face—you know, Thor’s sad face?—and I felt bad. Jane’s been hiding at the lab the whole time. I only came back here for a clean shirt, and Thor hits me with this ‘summoned to Asgard’ thing.”

“And you hate babysitting, so you threw me under the bus.”

“Dude, you have superpowers!”

“And—you repeat this and I’ll make sure your iPod Rick-rolls you on repeat forever—he kicked my ass last time. I’m gonna call the others.”

“Right, and none of them will run to Fury with this.”

That gets a wry laugh out of him. “Oh, that’s underhanded, appealing to my rebellious streak.” He turns serious again. “But, look, I need backup on this. I’ll just call Bruce in, none of the others. He has no love for the chain of command.”

“And he’d hulk out the minute he saw Loki,” says Darcy. “Believe me, I gave this some thought. You’re the only one I could call. Besides…” she pauses, looks him in the eye. “Thor trusts you. He always speaks so highly of the Man of Iron.”

“Ugh, fine,” Tony sighs. He knows when he’s being manipulated, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work. "Well," he grumbles, and this is about as gracious as he can get while agreeing to look after a crazy genocidal alien war criminal, "at least now I know how Thor got so fluent at texting all of a sudden."

Darcy takes that for the acquiescence it is, and her face lights up in a smile. “You are the best!” She grabs him for a hug, which can’t be that comfortable with his armor.

That’s when Thor comes striding back over. “Thank you, friend Tony!” he says, giving him a clap on the shoulder that almost sends him staggering. “I must answer the summons now, but I will return in time.”

“Oh no, Point Break, you’re not getting out of here before you give me a couple of answers.”

“Quickly then, for I must not keep the All-father waiting.”

“First off: when is ‘in time’? I’m not babysitting indefinitely.”

“I’m afraid I cannot answer that. The message was most vague about what was required of me. However, if it must be more than a few days I will be sure to return and let you know.”

“A few days?” Tony boggles. But he’s already agreed to do it, so he’s going to follow through. “Okay, fine. Fine. There are more important things. Such as: what makes you think he won’t kill me the minute you leave?”

“Look at him,” says Thor, doing just that, and there is a deep well of sadness in his eyes. Tony follows his gaze and takes in the slumped shoulders, the empty eyes, the blanket clutched as if it were a shield. “I fear that whatever befell him has broken him beyond repair. He is not the brother I knew. Besides, it appears that he is without his magic.”

“Glossing over for the moment the question of how the hell that can even happen, I’m just going to jump right to the obvious. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but he’s looking a bit different from usual. You don’t think magic has something to do with that?”

“I cannot pretend to understand the details, but it seems that shapeshifting is an innate ability of my brother’s, and does not require magic to perform.”

“Well, that’s entirely unhelpful. But sure, let’s go with that.”

“May I leave now, Man of Iron?” Thor asks in a voice tinged with amusement. It’s not like Tony could stop him jetting off right now if he wanted to.

“One more, and it’s kind of a biggie. Why is he here? On Earth? Shouldn’t you be taking him back with you so he can be locked up safe and sound?”

Thor takes a deep breath, lets it out in a sigh. "The full tale would be many hours in the telling, and my presence is expected in Asgard. For now, I will say that I stand by my actions, for my brother's suffering has gone far beyond justice already. I would not see him imprisoned in that Hel for an hour longer."

Tony boggles. "You sprang him from jail? Won't the all-daddy be mad? Wait, is that why they want to see you now—to face the music for what you did? Won't his parole officer take the chance to grab him while there's nobody but the puny mortal to babysit?"

"My people have already proven incompetent to hold him. Since it was not Asgardian jail from which I rescued him, they are none the wiser as to his escape."

"Whoa, whoa... there's a story here alright."

"And I will tell it upon my return. Until then, please let no further harm befall him. I ask you this as a brother-in-arms, and as a friend."

And… yep, there’s the pleading face, closely related to the sad face. Well, there's no standing firm in the face of that, even if Tony hadn't already given in. He sighs, nods, claps Thor on the back, winces at the thump he receives in return, and stands back.

"Good luck in Narnia, buddy.”

“I am indebted to you, my friend. I will return as soon as I may. Until then, fare thee well.”

With that, Thor calls up into the sky to Heimdall, who is apparently always watching like some kind of supernatural peeping tom, and is swallowed up by a shaft of incredible light. Darcy mumbles some quick excuses about having to take Jane some dinner at the lab, and takes off in a Jeep along a narrow dirt track, leaving Tony with more questions than ever.

***

"That is really creepy. You do know how creepy that is, right?"

They're in a stand-off. That's the only thing you can call it. Tony refuses to let Li’l Loki out of his sight. They can’t hang out in the trailer because the tiny chairs would splinter into matchsticks under his armor, and no way is he taking the armor off, not with the Littlest Dictator sitting _right there,_ perfectly still, unblinking, eyes following his every move.

In the end, he lights a fire in the fire pit out front. Takes him a couple of tries; turns out repulsor blasts are way better for disintegrating tinder than lighting a cozy fire, but if they'd wanted a Boy Scout here they woulda called Steve, right? Now, he's perching awkwardly on a rock, trying to hold a beer in his gauntlet while the Tiny Tyrant is curled in a camping chair opposite him, feet tucked up and the blanket around him like a cocoon against the March night air. He's said not a word since Thor and Darcy left.

Tony's half wishing there was something stronger than beer in the trailer, half thinking he should probably keep his wits about him if he's going to sit here all night with Mini-Mao doing the Care Bear stare. It’s actually been a while since he got blackout drunk, much to his own surprise, probably thanks to a combination of how busy he’s been with the team, and how he’s finally started making concessions to the fact that, just sometimes, Pepper might actually know what the hell she’s talking about.

If he lets Loki lead the conversation, they’ll sit here all night in silence under the desert moon. He has no idea where the nearest real road is, since he can’t see or hear any cars, and all he can hear is the wind, and the occasional coyote.

To quiet all that silence, he's been keeping up a rambling monologue of most of the random thoughts that flit across his mind, not expecting or receiving any reply out of Mr. short, dark, and brooding. So it comes as a bit of a surprise when Loki says:

"Do I know how creepy what is?"

"You. This." He gestures vaguely at Loki's person. "Your Children of the Corn impression."

"Children of the Corn."

"—Never mind. I just mean, last time I saw you, you had the whole murderous reindeer battle armor thing going on, and now you're trying to, what, look cute? Make people want to hug you and squeeze you and call you George? Sorry to burst your bubble, but kids mostly just creep me out."

He reaches down to free another can from the six pack at his feet, when he hears a familiar voice say in tones that can only be described as sultry:

"Is this better?"

He jumps to his feet, spraying himself in the face with beer as he slips trying to open the ring pull. His hands are raised before he even knows it, palms out, ready to fire.

"Hell NO, that is not better!"

Green eyes peer up at him through Pepper's lashes. Pepper's toenails are even painted that pearly shade of shell-pink that she likes so much. But it's a most un-Pepperlike chuckle that comes from Pepper's throat, soft and low and menacing.

"Suit yourself," says not-Pepper with a shrug. There's a shimmer like heat haze around the edges of the blanket bundle, and Li’l Loki is back.

Tony just stands there, staring at him.

"Do take a seat, Mr. Stark. You're looming."

"Not cool, little buddy, not cool."

Loki’s lips tighten and he looks away. “Rest assured, I am not your buddy.”

Like everything he’s said so far, this comes out with an almost completely flat affect.

"Whatever. Just don’t do that again.”

Tony warily lowers himself back onto the rock and picks up what's left of that can of beer. Loki's gaze is still averted, which gives Tony the chance to study his odd... companion? Prisoner? ...without feeling like eyeballs are boring into him in return. He might not have recognized him without the context clues, but there's definitely a certain Lokishness about the kid.

"So is this what you used to look like? You know, back when you and Thor were cutting class and chatting up cheerleaders?"

"I imagine I looked something like this. It has been many centuries."

Many centuries. Right. Tony’s glad of his mouth that just keeps on rolling, regardless of whether his brain’s on board, or that might lead to some awkward gaping. It’s not like he didn’t know, it’s just easy to forget, especially given how Loki looks right now. But, oh, right, yeah, he’s still talking, and what he’s saying is…

"But if you wanted, you could look like your regular self, though?"

"My... regular self." There's that tightening about the lips again. "The self you are more familiar with? Yes, I could look like that if I so choose."

"Then why don't you?"

"That face has a certain notoriety in this realm, does it not?"

Tony looks pointedly about them. Empty desert in every direction, and nothing but stars overhead.

"Yuh-huh. And it's a total coincidence that in this form you had Thor falling all over himself to fulfil your every need. Or that you chose Pepper when you thought it'd win me over." He shakes his head. "You know what, I shouldn't be surprised that you're being a manipulative little shit. I just can't figure out... what's your game here?"

There's no reply to that, not that he expected one, and the silence drags out. He's not good with silence, as exes, lab partners, and Jarvis can all attest. With Tony, there's always AC/DC cranked up to eleven, theories explored aloud, compulsive movement. Half the reason he built friends for himself was so that it'd be less weird that he keeps up this constant stream of chatter. Now, instead of people thinking he's weird for talking to himself, they think he's weird for talking to AIs. He can live with that.

Loki seems utterly unfazed by the silence, though, acting like he's only half aware that Tony's even there. He has this capacity to sit absolutely, unnervingly still, like he's not even human. Which, no shit Tony, of course he isn't human. Thor doesn't do this, though. His movements don’t have the nervous energy of a Tony, more a sure, firm demeanor that better fits a king, Tony guesses, not that he's known many kings.

Well, it's sure going to get boring around here if he has to stare at Loki staring at the fire all night, and it's not like he could really concentrate on anything else at this particular moment, so he might as well keep trying to engage him in conversation. Might be entertaining, at the very least.

"So, uh, I don't know what the rules are for underage drinking when you're actually centuries old and only _look_ fourteen, and what am I even talking about, you probably give kids mead for breakfast on Asgard anyway, but why don't you have a beer?"

He leans over, holding out one of the cans, and Loki doesn't seem to have noticed him speaking, so he taps the kid on the arm with the can, gently and totally unthreateningly.

It's quite unexpected, then, when Loki startles so much, scrabbling backward and away from Tony, that he tips over the camping chair, ending in a tangle of legs and blanket and aluminum tubing.

"Uh... sorry about that," says Tony, getting to his feet and offering a hand to help Loki up, which of course is completely ignored.

He just has to watch as the kid struggles to extricate himself, rights the chair a couple of feet further from Tony than before, and curls back up in it with the blanket wrapped tighter around him than ever.

"Yeah, I don't much like being handed things, either," says Tony, wrinkling his face in a wry apology. "I guess it'll just be here if you want it." He puts the beer on the ground between them.

Tony doesn't stare, in fact is careful to keep his gaze mostly aimed at the fire, but in the corner of his eye, he's aware of the effort Loki's making to control his breathing, to keep it smooth and even so that it won't be obvious. And maybe, though he'd never admit to seeing this, he noticed one of the small hands trembling as Loki swaddled himself back up in the blanket.

The posture and attitude are very familiar indeed, which is why Tony starts talking again as if nothing ever happened, mostly about underage drinking and his experiences thereof. All the while, though, he's turning Thor's words over in his mind:

_My brother's suffering has gone far beyond justice already._

He actually feels a kernel of rage begin to grow in the pit of his stomach, because much though Reindeer Games was an evil piece of shit who thoroughly deserved to be locked up, it's painful to see someone so proud and arrogant reduced to this silent, trembling mess. He tries not to wonder if this is what people saw when he came back from—no.

It's almost a relief when the night is split by gunfire and chaos.


	2. How Deep the Bullet Lies

## Tony

For all his bluster about hating kids and not being a hero, it turns out Tony is still the kind of person who'll throw himself in between danger and the kid it's threatening. Just some programmed evolutionary response, he rationalizes inside the compartment of his mind that keeps up a running commentary on everything he does; it just proves that Loki knew what he was doing when he chose this disguise. Or possibly his sudden heroism is more because he sort of promised his buddy—his big, beefy alien god buddy who wields a giant hammer that could send a train car flying—that he'd keep his little brother out of trouble tonight.

'Trouble' would definitely cover the swarm of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents that came out of nowhere and are currently about to overrun them.

(Not S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, says the rational brain-compartment; S.H.I.E.L.D. would have helicopters here, maybe a quinjet, and nothing like that came over the horizon. This is some group that wants them to _think_ S.H.I.E.L.D. is here for Loki, but that has access to some kind of tech—or even magic, he supposes—that cloaked them, or teleported them, or something. That’s the kind of tech that Fury has wet dreams about, but from all his poking about on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s ‘secure’ servers, he knows they’re still chasing that Holy Grail.)

He doesn't remember putting on his helmet, but his helmet is on. Doesn't remember rushing over to block the energy blast aimed at Loki, but here he is blocking it _with his own body_ , and yelling at the kid to run, as if anyone would need to be told.

But apparently Loki does need to be told, because he's not moving, and— _Oh, shit! That's a lot of blood!_ He doesn't bother firing back at the assailants (because rational-brain reminds him that he probably doesn't want to kill actual S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, on the off-chance that that's what these really are), just picks up the bundle on the chair, blanket and all, and slings it over his shoulder. When the 'agents' realize what he's about to do, they rush him as a group, but they're too late to stop him pushing off the ground and blasting up into the sky.

Not too late, though, to catch his left boot repulsor with an energy blast. He's spiraling up into the sky, trying to balance the thrust from the right boot with one from his left gauntlet, but not really pulling it off because the dead-weight of Loki over his shoulder is throwing everything out of whack, and a flurry of bullets and energy pulses are flying past him. His erratic course is actually kinda helping with that, making him a harder target, but he needs to get it under control before this spiral turns into a tailspin. Even more so when Loki starts struggling against his grip, apparently having regained consciousness.

"Sorry about this, kiddo," he says, not certain if Loki can hear or understand him as they hurtle into the sky, but compelled to say it anyway. "Just hang on."

Evening out takes some concentration and finesse, and once it's done, he stabilizes himself in a hover, and takes a look around. There are no real landmarks to speak of, no lights on the horizon from Puente Antiguo or any other town. His in-helmet speakers are crackling a little, which sends a jolt of panic through him. Now would be a really bad time to get cut off from his other brain.

"Hey, Jarvis."

"Sir?"

Relief. "Glad you're still with us, Jarv. Now can you tell me where the hell we are?"

A 3D map flickers up on his HUD, labels showing the direction of the trailer, and of Puente Antiguo. Other than that, no real landmarks to speak of. The town is not even a light on the horizon.

Once again, while he was busy dealing with the immediate threat, other levels of his mind were working on tactics, on the bigger picture. He must have gained enough altitude to get out of the sights of the (fake?) agents, before heading out away from the town. They're now 20, maybe 30 miles from where they started, with desert as far as the eye can see.

Tony takes them down, as gently as he can with one boot out of commission, and lays down his bundle, a pang of worry stabbing through him as he realizes Loki must have gotten too weak to struggle. The night was already cold enough, even before they got enough altitude that they might have been endangered by low-flying aircraft, but he doesn't think that's why Loki is shivering.

He peels away the blanket to reveal baby-blue flannel PJs with a snowflake pattern, obviously belonging to either Jane or Darcy. (Cute. He files that away for later mocking.) His stomach turns over when he sees the slick of blood adhering the fabric to Loki's abdomen. He needs to get a look at that wound, so off come the gauntlets. He tries to be careful, but Loki flinches at the touch, with a mumble-groan that has to be alien cursing.

"Sorry about this, snowflake," he mutters, shaking his head at himself for apologizing to a homicidal maniac who once threw him out of a window, and who is currently barely clinging to consciousness and probably can't even hear him. How much blood can an alien deity lose before it becomes life-threatening? Do they have blood types like humans? What would even happen if he turns out to need a transfusion? They can't exactly go to an ER—what if he's got weird alien physiology that freaks everybody out?

Turns out, after all those sci-fi energy blasts making a light show to rival Pink Floyd on ice, it was a regular old bullet that got Loki. The bleeding has obviously slowed, but it's nowhere close to stopping. Even worse, there's no exit wound.

"Come on, come on, I know you can heal yourself, dammit." He's seen Thor after a battle enough times by now, wounds closing on their own almost fast enough to see with the naked eye. With a flick of his wrist, Loki should be able to pluck this bullet out of his own flesh, leaving the path clear for muscles to regrow, blood vessels to rejoin. But now he lies there bleeding and trembling, eyes vacant, breath shallow. It’s this more than anything that convinces him Loki really isn’t bluffing about losing his magic.

"Well, bad news, bud. I got the basic Avengers first-aid training, but that's about it. I'm much better with machine guts than people guts."

He does his best, applying pressure with the blanket to the wound, wrapping it around Loki's torso as tightly as he can, but he knows it's a stop-gap at best.

And those aren't the only concerns.

"Jarvis, find the location of the nearest safe house, and send it to my HUD. Special encryption." He has layers of redundancies and backup protocols and emergency procedures. He and Fury have this ongoing tug of war over security, a little game that keeps him on his toes, hiding his secrets from S.H.I.E.L.D. while cracking all of theirs. But tonight it's turned into the kind of game that could get him killed, and it looks like his opponents are a move or two ahead of him already.

"Do you wish me to inform Ms. Potts or the other Avengers of what has occurred?"

"No," he says right off. Then rethinks. "You know what? Yeah, get Bruce to meet me. Say it's urgent, ask him to bring a medical kit, but no details. As for the others... tell Bruce the less they know, the better. Then, initiate Protocol Total Recall. I'm going offline. Don't try and contact me unless I get in touch first." That's a real last-ditch protocol, having Jarvis wipe his own memory of their recent interaction and store it on Tony’s secure server. If it's really S.H.I.E.L.D. behind the attack, they might already be far enough into his systems to be able to retrieve the information, and doesn't that thought make him sick to his stomach.

There's a pause, and then: “Sir, I must inform you that this course of action is inadvisable.”

“I know, J. I’m sorry.” He isn’t sure how much it bothers Jarvis to have his memory wiped, even of a few minutes, but it sure as hell feels shitty to treat his friend like—well, like a machine.

Unruffled as ever, Jarvis replies. "Very good, sir. And, might I add... good luck." With that, his one point of contact with the rest of the universe—well, his only contact who isn't batshit insane and bleeding to death—cuts communication. There's no actual sound, no static or white noise, but he could swear the desert silence sounds heavier.

***

It was originally Natasha's idea to set up safe houses for the Avengers, scattered around the country, but it was Tony's to keep their locations from S.H.I.E.L.D. And since he was the one bankrolling the project, he pulled rank.

At the time, the whole thing seemed ridiculous, but he went along with it because getting involved in Natasha's spy games sounded like a diversion. Now, he's beyond grateful for the unassuming little house in a suburb of San Diego. He’s laying out pieces of his armor on the kitchen table, taking stock of the damage, and letting a corner of his mind worry about whether they were spotted when they got here. With any luck, the light pollution from the city and the frequent sight of aircraft taking off and landing covered their arrival. It would be the turd-cherry on the top of this whole shit-cake if some UFO chaser (or, worse, Iron Man fanboy) showed up at their door.

Of course, the universe chooses that moment to cut into his thoughts with an actual knock at the actual door. His heart doesn't stop racing until he's looked through the peephole.

"Bruce! This is why you're my favorite," he says, pulling the door open, in a lower tone than his usual boisterous greeting.

"I, uh, I thought it was my winning smile." Bruce's smile right at this moment is better described as tired and drawn, though. No wonder; it's nearly tomorrow morning already, and he's just raced from L.A. on a convoluted route designed to throw off anyone following, changing cars more than once. Again, it seemed like a ridiculous protocol when they first came up with it, but now Tony's starting to see the sense. Bruce does his best to sound mock-pissed, but it comes off as more concerned. "I hope this is important."

"You could say that." He's been worrying about how to present this. Right now, still unconscious, Loki looks like a harmless kid, but Tony knows the absolute worst idea would be to blind-side Bruce with who his patient really is; that way lies giant green rage-madness. No, best to get it out in the open first. He takes a deep breath, and it all comes out in a rush.

"You know what I never realized is the best part of being an only child? Not ever having to babysit. Thor's decided to make up for my missing out on that coming-of-age experience by making me look after his little bro while he goes home to see the folks."

"So, yeah, anyway, he's in the master bedroom sort of bleeding to death, and I thought we might want to fix that so Thor doesn't come back to find we broke his toys while he was away."

Bruce's face remains absolutely impassive. He blinks once, twice, maybe takes a few slightly deeper breaths than usual. Tony studies his eyes for the slightest flicker of green, but they don't change. When he finally speaks, his voice comes out bland and even. "Well, that explains why you're not heading to the ER. They probably wouldn't know what to do with him if they had him."

Tony lets out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. "I did mention you're my favorite, right?"

Bruce takes off his glasses and wipes them slowly on his shirt, still with the deep breathing. "How come—I don’t even know where to start with the questions."

“Yeah, well, the answer to most of them is, 'Not a damn clue.' From what I gathered, Loki was in Asgard-prison when someone else kidnapped him, did… stuff… to him, and now he can’t use his mojo, which I guess is why he's lying there bleeding out instead of patching himself up so he rant about how all-powerful he is. Thor got summoned by the all-daddy, and here I am left holding the baby. Well. Not exactly a baby, but, you know."

“I’m not sure I do, but I’ll take your word for it.”

Gotta hand it to Bruce—he’s a pro. When he sees how bad things are, he switches right over into emergency mode and opens up a medical case on the nightstand next to Loki's bed. Tony guesses that compared to dealing with your inner rage-monster, a little thing like a dying alien maniac is no big deal. He shows his gratitude to Bruce by managing not to make (too many) jokes about sexy nurses while handing him tools.

Tony applies pressure to the wound, and watches Bruce's sure, steady movements with the scissors as he makes short work of the snowflake pajamas. Then it's a basin of water and a gentle sponge to clean away some of the gore and get a better look. Loki's skin has a disturbing gray tint, and Tony tries to avoid looking at the ugly hole torn in his side, swallowing the bile that rises in his throat. But what catches his eye is even worse.

The whole of Loki's chest, his shoulders, his arms—everywhere Tony can see—it’s all covered in patches of shining, silvered scar tissue. The crisscross lines of vicious lacerations; irregular burn-blotches; gouges; tears. Systematic and brutal. Tony's vision contracts to a tiny point. His heart pounds. He has to remind himself to breathe, has to count to keep his breaths even. Daren't flick his eyes to Bruce to see if he's noticed.

He knew, intellectually, there was torture involved, but how bad did it have to be that even with the super-healing of a space Viking there’s still this much scarring? He forces himself to lower his hand from where it’d moved to touch the scarring around his arc reactor, the physical reminder of three months in his own personal hell. This wasn’t the same. Loki’d brought it on himself, right? The title ‘Merchant of Death’ echoes in his memory, and he shoves the thoughts away.

He manages to keep it together, to hold the flashlight still for Bruce. He doesn't think he trembles or pants for breath or babbles his panicked thoughts out loud. If he does, the doctor is good enough not to say anything. Somehow, it's over, and Bruce is taping gauze to his patient's abdomen with a sure hand.

Loki is sedated, lying disturbingly still but breathing evenly. Everything seemed pretty comparable to human anatomy, Bruce says, and it didn't look like the bullet hit anything vital. It's now just a question of giving him fluids to make up for the blood loss. A human wouldn’t have made it, he says, but as long as the super-healing kicks in, things look promising for Loki.

"I, uh, shouldn't be here when he wakes up," says Bruce, his hand on the front door. "The Other Guy wouldn't appreciate it." He pauses. "You... you sure you'll be OK?"

Tony's going to pretend this question is only about leaving him with a possibly homicidal houseguest, and not at all about the panic attack he totally didn't just have. "Yeah, we managed to have a whole chat without any defenestration earlier, and that was _before_ he got turned into a swiss cheese." It's not even an act. For some reason Tony's actually feeling pretty casual about staying alone in the house with the fruit-and-nut-bar. "No need to call in the cavalry just yet."

"Well, I won't leave town. I need some rest, so I'm going to check in to a hotel and stick around for a couple days, in case you need backup."

"Make sure you use the—"

"I know the protocol, Tony. I already used my fake ID for the, you know, the rental car." Another of Natasha's seemingly over the top precautions that was now cause for relief.

"Yeah. Well. Good."

Bruce just nods, and steps out into the growing daylight.

Tony turns back into the house before anyone sees him. What are you supposed to do while waiting for someone to wake up from a near-fatal gunshot wound? Especially someone you're not meant to take your eyes off, in case of attempted world domination. He grabs a book at random off the shelf, and a bottle of something out of a cabinet in the kitchen, but falls asleep in the chair before he can even take the cap off, his feet propped up on the bed beside Loki.

***

It's late afternoon when Loki wakes up. By this time, Tony's cleaned most of the blood off his suit and is now poking at that boot repulsor with some of his tools, which Bruce brought along from Malibu. ( _"Thanks, buddy! Did I ever mention that—" "Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm your favorite.")_

Every few minutes, he glances up at the patient to see if there are any changes, and Loki must do this shit on purpose, because one time he glances up and the kid is out cold, and the next time, just a minute or two later, there are eyes boring holes into him.

He squashes the impulse to jump out of his skin and halfway into the ceiling, but he does fumble the boot, and it drops to the ground, undoing his latest work on the fix.

"Holy shit! Can you maybe try not giving me a heart attack? Especially when I spent so much time last night saving your ass."

Loki looks down at himself, prone in the bed. "You imagine that you have done me a favor, Stark?" His voice is young, and hoarse from his ordeal, but still manages to convey all the authority and condescension of a centuries-old prince.

"Yes, I do. And at considerable risk to my irreplaceable self, I might add, so I think that entitles me to a few answers."

"Is that so?"

"It is so.” He starts checking the points off on his fingers. “First off, where exactly have you been the last three years? Why would Thor think it's a great idea to bring you to the planet that is still rebuilding from your last invasion attempt? What happened to your powers? Let's also revisit the question of why you're pretending to be a kid, and what you're plotting. And, oh yeah, it nearly slipped my mind, but— _who were the goons who tried to kill us last night_?"

"Are you quite finished?" Loki's mouth twists in a curl of amusement, but he’s still off his game, because the smile doesn't contain any bitterness or venom. He just looks tired, and... sad.

"For now."

"I require water, and some answers to questions of my own, and then I might consider responding to yours."

_'I require?' 'I might consider responding?'_ Who the hell does he think he is? Oh yeah, megalomaniacal alien god-prince. Tony huffs out a pointed sigh, gets up, and pours a glass of water from the pitcher on the nightstand. Loki drinks the whole thing—slowly—and holds his glass out for a refill before speaking again.

"Who assisted you with my injuries?"

"Assisted me?" Tony evades.

"Yes. You are a craftsman, or so I understand, not a healer. You have cleaned and dressed my wound, and, if I am any judge, you were first required to remove a projectile."

"I might've had some, you know, surgical help from Dr. Banner." He's hoping the name doesn't ring a bell, but judging from the hardness that overtakes Loki's expression, he's out of luck.

"The beast."

"Okay, yeah, that's my friend you're talking about, not to mention someone who overcame his personal feelings to save your life, so when you're talking about him you'll use the words 'Doctor,' 'Bruce,' or 'Banner.' Any combination will do. Got it?"

"Very well. It was Dr. Banner who tended to me while I was unconscious?"

"Yeah. I mean, I did some first aid when you were shot, but like you say, I'm not a healer, and I had to call someone who knew what they were doing. I was in here for the surgery. I didn't leave you alone with the guy who kicked your ass, if that's what you're wondering."

That doesn't seem to be it, though.

"So then you both—" Loki cuts off his own sentence, and turns his head away, but not before Tony sees him make a tiny gesture downward with his eyes, and suddenly he knows what the deal is.

The scars.

He knows a thing or two about what it feels like to have the thing that makes you vulnerable written on your flesh for anyone to read. It's why he’s always been so protective of the arc reactor, just for starters. He also knows Loki is probably aware of this and is playing him like a fiddle right now, but on the off-chance that he isn't...

"Hey, look. I get why you might feel—"

"Do not presume to know me, Stark," Loki spits, face twisted in a snarl, and his sudden rage is like a physical force that batters Tony.

"Okay, okay, no presuming." He holds up his hands in a gesture of surrender.

Well, that’s confusing. Surely someone who was playing on his sympathy wouldn’t shut down the conversation like that. Or maybe he’s pretending to be angry, so Tony will think that? Ugh, schemers make his head hurt.

Loki scoots down in the bed gingerly, and pulls up the comforter, and Tony’s about to point out that he hasn’t answered a single one of those questions, but before rolling away, he offers this reluctantly:

"Perhaps it would please you to know that I have spent the past years as a guest of my former masters, who were most unimpressed with my failure."

When he puts that together with the memory of the scars, no, it doesn't fucking please him. He doesn’t care what Loki did to earn it, he just feels like he’s been punched somewhere in the vicinity of his arc reactor.

***

There’s a second bedroom in the safe house, and Loki’s out of danger from the bullet wound now, but for some reason Tony naps sitting in the chair again. And again, his sleep (though short) is blissfully dream-free. It’s been a while since he had this much real sleep. Funny how that works—how he can spend five hours on his California king memory-foam mattress, get twenty minutes of scattered sleep, and wake up more tired than he went to bed, yet two hours crooked awkwardly in a cheap armchair, on the run, with his feet propped inches from the leg of someone who once tried to murder him, that’s apparently what his body thinks is a restful scenario.

It’s still a nightmare that wakes him, though, even if it’s not his own.

When he first comes to consciousness, it takes a moment figure out whose whimpering that is.

Because, yeah, the god of lies and bad family drama is in fact whimpering in his sleep like a kid far littler than the one he’s currently impersonating. Whimpering, and twitching, and kicking, and …pleading?

_No! Please! No more, I beg of you…”_

Okay, no matter how many times someone’s tried to take over the world, it’s hard to listen to them going through that. Tony reaches out and shakes Loki gently.

He starts awake, glaring around wildly, and Tony catches the arm that swings at his face. When Loki realizes where he is and who he’s with, he starts to gather his tattered dignity around him and is one second from ordering Tony out of the room—or killing him with a pinkie, one of those—when Tony grabs the pill bottle and glass of water. He’s been on this merry-go-round enough times himself to know it’s easier when someone hands you an excuse to hold onto some dignity.

“Time for your antibiotic, snowflake. I know it’s probably kind of redundant, but Bruce wasn’t sure how much your healing ability’s been compromised by this magic ban, so he didn’t want to risk infection. He put you on a strict schedule here, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed but it’s kind of a bad idea to say ‘no’ to Bruce.” He offers a lopsided grin to soften the reminder of Bruce’s ragier half.

Loki says nothing, trying to act like he’s not practically hyperventilating from the nightmare, but he takes the pill obediently. Tony plunks himself back down in the chair, picks up his boot, which is back in better-than-new condition, not that Loki needs to know that, and starts pretending to tweak it.

“We should be safe here another day or so,” he says, “so you can just kick back, rest up, braid your hair, whatever. I’m afraid the in-flight entertainment is a bit thin on the ground, though; we don’t exactly pay for cable in our secret safe-houses. I think I saw a _Beauty and the Beast_ DVD out there, if you get really bored. I guarantee if you ask around nobody will take credit for that, but for what it’s worth my money is on Bruce…”

He keeps this up for a while. Forget the genius, forget the high-tech flying armor, his real superpower is never shutting up. It comes in handy sometimes. Like now, when, taking a surreptitious glance at Loki in the mirror, he sees something resembling relief—maybe even gratitude—cross that pale, drawn face.


	3. Evil on the Wind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now we start getting some of Darcy's perspective on this whole thing.

## Darcy

In the New Mexico desert a few miles outside Puente Antiguo, Darcy Lewis hugs her sweater tighter around her, more for comfort than for warmth. A shadow passes over the land as a bank of thunderclouds boils overhead. Gradually, she sees a humanoid figure emerge, hurtling out of the clouds, surrounded by the crackle of lightning.

Thor lands a few yards away from the trailer, hard enough to crack the earth, and holds out his arms as Jane rushes at him. Darcy hangs back by the fire pit, trying not to fidget self-consciously.

"Oh, god, Thor, I'm so sorry. We never thought anything like this would happen," Jane sobs into his chest, and Darcy cringes. She was the one who involved Tony; she should be the one weeping and apologizing. But Jane's too nice for her own good and feels responsible by association or something.

"Jane, Jane," Thor soothes, running his hand gently over the back of her head. "You did not do this terrible deed. We must not dwell on what is past, but move quickly to right these wrongs. Tell me, do we know who is responsible?"

Jane shakes her head, wipes her cheeks with the sleeve of her sweater, and squares her shoulders. That’s so Jane—give her a puzzle or a research project, and she can deal with anything. It’s sitting around waiting that she’s so bad at.

She leads Thor over to Darcy, who’s loitering near the knocked-over camping chair. It’s spattered with blood, and lies on a large, dark stain.

"No idea, yet, but Darcy’s noticed something a bit strange."

That's Darcy's cue to pick up the story. "Yeah. See,” she says, pointing. “These are just regular bullet casings, which made me think it was some Earth-based group. But then look at these scorch marks over here. Looks like an energy blast of some kind. Jane's going to take some samples back to the lab."

"I don’t know if I’ll get any information from them,” Jane interjects. “It's not really my field, you know?"

Darcy wants to give Jane a hug, she looks so apologetic at not being a world leader in sci-fi/alien weapons technology. The guy for that would be Tony Stark, she guesses, but the fact that he's not here right now is kind of the point.

"Perhaps my friend Dr. Banner can aid us in that," muses Thor. Darcy and Jane share a look, but Thor continues, oblivious. "I did not wish to involve him, or indeed anyone else, even Tony—" he gives Darcy a reproachful look, and, no shit Thor, way to rub it in. She's been beating herself up over that since they got back from their all-nighter at the lab and found Tony gone.

Moving on. There’s more bad news to tell Thor, and god help her because she’s going to get more of that disappointed look. Who’d have thought alien beefcake princes would be so well-schooled in the puppy-dog eyes? "So, uh, yeah, this isn't the only weird shit that's going on this week. I already tried calling Bruce, and, turns out... he's been off the grid since Tuesday. We're hoping whoever did this didn't manage to get to him too."

"You attempted to communicate with Dr. Banner?"

Jane's the one who jumps in to placate him. "We weren’t going to say anything that could lead S.H.I.E.L.D. to Loki; we were just getting desperate. Tony was missing, so I called Pepper on the pretext that he was helping me to upgrade some equipment. She said she hadn't heard anything from him, and that Jarvis was being... how did she put it? 'Cagey.' So then I figured Bruce was the next most likely person to have heard from him, but his phone went straight to voicemail every time, and nobody's seen him since before Darcy texted Tony two days ago."

"That is not good news. Dr. Banner is Tony’s closest associate, and it is possible that he is now involved. Nevertheless, Jane, I do not wish for you to worry. I am here now, and I will not rest until I know what has happened to my brother and the Man of Iron."

"You can stay, then? They don't need you for whatever it was back home?"

"Nay." Thor's face is troubled. "They did not send for me at all. I fear this plot goes deeper than I first believed."

"Whoa, hold up,” Darcy interjects. “You're saying someone faked a message from Asgard?”

“The messenger was real enough; I recognized him from the palace. It was not the All-father who sent him, however.”

“I suppose they’re, um, questioning him right now?”

“They would if they could find him. His family has not seen him in some days.”

Jane sighs. “Great. A million dead ends and nothing to go on. The longer they're gone, the less likely we are to find them, so perhaps it's time to let some of the other Avengers in on this. It's one thing hiding Loki from them, but if it's Tony... and maybe Bruce..."

Thor nods solemnly, and lets Jane lead him into the trailer. Darcy stays outside, staring at the stain on the ground.

"That's a lot of blood," she murmurs to herself. "A really, really large amount of blood."

She knows she did the right thing. If she hadn't called Tony in, it would've been her and Jane here. They don't have powers or armor, just a taser that’s running low on batteries, some bug spray, and a slightly mildewed camping chair. She's pretty sure she could weaponize those things at a pinch, but it totally made sense to call in the dude with the suit of armor and the reactor in his chest. Since they're not looking at Tony's corpse right here in the middle of all this blood, there's still a pretty good chance that he's alive. And Loki, too, obvs. It'd totally suck to have to see the look on Thor's face if his little bro got shish-kebabed. But the main thing is, Tony was here because she asked him to be, and now he's probably kidnapped by aliens or some shadowy government agency... or some cackling Bond villain has him tied up in his volcano lair.

She wrenches her brain away from the image of Tony Stark tied up. That actually kind of sounds like the sort of thing he'd be into...

_Focus, Darcy! Lives at stake here._

If the attackers were after Loki, they'd have no reason to leave Tony alive, right? Unless they realized he'd be worth ransoming. Come to think of it, wasn't that kind of what happened before? See, there you go, she tells herself, he has experience being a kidnappee. He knows the drill. Probably he's engineered a teleportation device out of chewing gum and is zapping them out of there right now.

On the other hand, who's to say it wasn't Loki who planned this whole thing? Pretended to be powerless, lured Thor away... He wouldn't have any cause to keep Tony around, would he? And which of them is injured? Whose is all this blood?

Well, that's a question she can get answered. She barges into the trailer and rummages around in the drawers. Jane lives like a slob at the best of times, so she finds what she’s looking for inside a saucepan in the cupboard under the sink.

"Darcy? Something wrong?"

"Nope.” She holds up the Q-tips and the Ziploc bags. “Just giving my inner CSI wannabe a workout. Don't interrupt this touching reunion on my account."

In her opinion, Jane should be taking this opportunity to cry on Thor's large, firm shoulders and allowing him to comfort her appropriately, but they're just sitting at the tiny table with their hands around steaming mugs of coffee and wearing identical worried frowns. It's actually kinda cute.

It’s not like she has training in this stuff, just the late-night CSI marathons—but there wasn't much to do in a town like Puente Antiguo before S.H.I.E.L.D. commandeered their lives, so there have been a lot of marathons. She rolls the Q-tip around until it's got a coating of blood and dirt, then pops it into a baggie. Maybe she should get a few samples from different spots, just in case there's more than one person's blood here. She has four or five tightly sealed baggies when she spots something, nestled under the leg of the overturned camping chair.

She uses a Q-tip to lift it up: a navy-blue strap made of some weird lightweight material with a slight sheen. It must have been torn from something with great force, its buckle twisted out of shape as if crushed by something heavy. She's worked around S.H.I.E.L.D. enough by now for the material to seem very familiar, and this looks just about the right size for attaching one of their boot-knife sheaths.

Darcy tucks it into a baggie before turning it over in her hands for closer examination. Should she get a boot-knife? Seems like if she's going to keep getting in mortal danger on the regular she should maybe look into getting a boot-knife. Plus, they're kind of badass in a way that tasers really are not.

She bags a couple of empty shell casings for good measure, then stuffs all her evidence into the pocket of her cargo pants. It looks like this was where the action took place, but she decides to take a walk around the whole trailer, to make sure she hasn't missed anything. Plus, maybe she should give Jane and Thor a few minutes before busting up their party.

Not much round back but some scattered trash, and half a dead bird. She’s using the toe of her shoe to move a crushed can when she hears something: a soft crack, accompanied by an ozone-y smell, and then low voices from the front of the trailer, where she was just seconds ago—and they’re definitely not Thor or Jane.

Where the hell could people have come from? It's not like it's easy to sneak up on them out here; normally they see and hear cars coming down the dirt road three minutes before they arrive. Darcy shivers, the hair on her arms and the back of her neck standing up. She sneaks around the side of the trailer, and drops down into a low crouch before peeking her head around the corner.

"Ho-lee shit," she mouths silently to herself.

She heard more than one voice, but right now all she can see is the solid wall of muscle that makes up this one guy's back. He has to be at least seven feet tall, his arms are each as big around as Darcy's entire body, he's got his right hand resting on the top of a giant double-bladed battle-ax that stands as high as his chest, and he's totally wearing one of those ancient looking battle-skirt thingies.

"Nothing remains here," says the voice of a different man, who now comes into view, pacing anxiously. He’s also dressed like a warrior, but compared to Mr. Muscle over there he's a kitten. "We should leave before the Midgardians see us."

"You are mistaken, Galinn" another voice purrs. Its owner sashays toward the man she's addressing, hips swaying. She's wearing what Darcy can only think of as Asgardian stripper chic, all thigh-high stockings and green lace-up bustier. Her hair is a thick cascade of wavy blonde. She lifts one hand and places it seductively on Galinn's chest. "There are powerful traces here, which I shall use to track our prey. It is no shame that you sense them not; this is, after all, why I am here to aid you. Well... it’s one reason." Her giggle is so painfully fake Darcy has to roll her eyes.

The guy—Galinn—seems to be lapping it up, though. His face stretches into a disturbingly vacant dopey smile. “Enchantress…” he says, then seems to come back to himself, shaking his head as if to clear it. “You believe you can find something useful?”

“Yes, but it will take me a few minutes. Why don’t you look around and make sure there isn’t something we’ve missed?” the woman says, waving her hand at the detritus from the fight.

Galinn nods eagerly and walks away, examining the ground. As soon as his back is turned, the Enchantress drops her coy smirk and rolls her eyes.

“What a tiresome little man,” says her huge companion as soon as Galinn’s out of earshot. “’Twere better we abandoned him here and continued our quest alone.”

“I quite agree, but if the All-father believes we are helping him, he will not watch us too closely. Once we have Loki, we will take him to the Lord of Hell and you may do with Galinn as you wish.”

Darcy can’t see ax-guy’s expression, but he runs a meaty finger along the edge of his blade and she gets a pretty clear idea of what he wishes to do with Galinn.

He’s still impatient, though. “Why must we involve ourselves in this? Let the Lie-smith’s enemies squabble; they will exact your revenge for you.”

“And miss the opportunity to have Mephisto in my debt for doing him a service?” Her mouth curves wickedly; it’s too creepy to be called smile. “Besides, his vengeance can be so… creative. It’s a joy to watch.”

Darcy shudders. This sounds like a fate she wouldn’t wish on anyone, even Loki. And as far as she can tell, this Galinn dude hasn’t done anything besides be clingy and annoying.

The Enchantress crouches, drags her fingertips through the huge smear of dried blood, and rubs her fingers together with a crackle of toxic green energy. She sniffs at the substance.

“Yes, he was here, and he is not yet dead.”

“Where is he now?”

She crinkles her nose. “If he’d departed using magic I would know. He…” She lifts her head as if looking for answers in the sky. “He flew. And yet he would have been too injured to change shape, if I’m any judge.”

“I hate mysteries.”

“As do I, my dear. Not to worry; I don’t need to know how he went, only _where_ , and now we know that he did come to Midgard.”        

Darcy, trapped behind the trailer, is quietly freaking out. She’s still not convinced she’s really seeing this, so she scrabbles through her pockets for her cell phone and takes a photo to show to Thor. The phone makes a soft click, and the alien stripper lady freezes.

"Crap," Darcy breathes.

The Enchantress whirls on her and with the flick of one hand binds her in smoky green tendrils, which haul her up into the air so her feet are dangling a few inches above the ground.

"What have we here?" She trails one green-painted talon up Darcy's neck and under her chin to tilt her head up. Even with Darcy floating above the ground, this woman is still taller.

"Oh, I'm nobody, just... um... hiking. Don't worry about me, I'll be on my way and I never saw you, right?" Darcy tries to hide her fear, but she thinks her heart is beating loud enough for Jane and Thor to hear inside. Why aren't they rushing out to her rescue?

Before she can follow up on that thought and yell out, another tendril of magic fastens itself over her mouth.

"Ugh, these mortals are so tedious," sighs the woman. Already, she's bored of Darcy, and slinking back over to her other victim, Galinn, who now Darcy can see him better, turns out to have eyes that are bugged out and yet somehow simultaneously glazed.

The woman gestures, and a portal opens. As she follows her fellows through, she glances over her shoulder at Darcy and says, with another gesture and a spark of magic that zaps Darcy in the head, "No, indeed, you shall tell no-one of our presence here."

The portal snaps shut, the magic binding Darcy snaps, and she tumbles to the ground, clutching at her head, blinking, dazed.

When she pushes her way back into the trailer, Jane asks if she's okay.

"Were you talking to yourself out there or something? Thought I heard voices."

"No, I... don't think so?" Darcy's not really sure of what she was doing out there.

_Oh, hey, when did Thor get here?_

Before she can voice that question, though, the others are getting to their feet.

"Hope you can pack in a hurry," says Jane. "Thor agrees that it's time to involve the other Avengers, so Pepper's sending a Stark Industries jet for us. Grab what you can; I have no idea how long we'll be gone."

Darcy nods blankly, and goes to shove some t-shirts into a suitcase.


	4. Our Favorite Remedy

## Tony

Tony's at the kitchen counter, eating—well, he has no idea what the time is, but it’s dry cereal, so that must mean breakfast—when his houseguest shuffles out of the bedroom, holding onto the wall with one hand and a towel to wet hair with the other. How the hell did someone who was shot in the gut yesterday (two days ago?) manage to get into the shower, let alone take one and get dressed, without help? Tony's gonna have words to say if his patient bursts any stitches. He's not sure he can recreate Bruce's fine work.

But that's not the real weird thing here. The real weird thing is that Loki is now taller than yesterday. Taller, older, and... more female. Plus, dressed in a vintage tee that's slightly too big in an off-the-shoulder kind of way, and some tight black leather pants that can only have been left here by Natasha. Tony doesn't even want to think about getting into those while nursing an injury.

He doesn't say anything, just gets up and goes to pour a cup of coffee, following Loki's progress out of the corner of his eye. Pretty sure Mr. (Ms.?) Don't Presume wouldn't appreciate being helped by a mere mortal, so Tony isn't going to offer unless he has to. He lets go of some tension when Loki makes it to the counter and awkwardly eases onto a stool.

"Here. Drink up."

Loki sniffs at the coffee, seems to decide it's not poisoned, and takes a tentative sip.

"I know chicken soup is for a cold or whatever, but I guess it can't hurt for gunshot wounds either. Besides, all we've got is cans and dried stuff, unless you want to risk another bullet just to go pick up some milk at the convenience store..."

He makes himself busy so he doesn’t need to look at Loki, but then the microwave beeps, and he has to turn around to give her the bowl of soup. Sure enough there are green eyes following him, this time with a spark of real amusement. It’s like she can hear the question he’s trying to avoid asking. He thinks the problem he’s having isn’t so much with Loki being _female_ as it is with _Loki_ being female. She’s small, slight, fine-boned, with a pixie haircut. Since everything Loki does is manipulative in some way, maybe she figures this’ll bring out a protective streak in Tony that the kid form failed to do. It’s not working, because he still sees Loki in that face; the eyes might be wider but they’re no less calculating. The leather pants and the one bare shoulder, though, are having what he suspects to have been the other intended effect.

"So, uh..." Tony clears his throat and waves a hand at her. "What's with the, uh..."

“Oh,” says Loki, pretending to misunderstand and running a hand through her hair, “It’s so much less trouble than keeping it long, don’t you think?”

He weighs his curiosity about what she’ll say against his unwillingness to give her the satisfaction of asking. He just can't leave it alone, though. It's one of the personality traits that's vying for the honor of getting him killed one day.

“I meant,” he says, “why are you a chick?”

"Why not?"

“Well, it’s just… shouldn’t you be saving your strength or something?”

"This body unsettles you, Stark?" Loki's having way too much fun with this, smirking over her mug. Then, as if with scientific curiosity, “Do you deem it more or less ‘creepy’ than my previous form?”

"Oh, this is to make me more comfortable. Right."

"I did not say that."

"There’s only us here, so why don’t you just be yourself?"

There's a long, uncomfortable pause, during which Loki holds that intense searching eye contact, and Tony tries not to squirm or look away.

Finally, she ducks behind her mug as if she was planning to take another drink all along. “One lie is as good as another.”

"Hey, no big deal. Do what you're gonna do. All I’m saying is, if you were trying to distract me, I’d have expected more in the chest department.”

He winces. The joke hits closer to home for him than for Loki, it seems. There’s always a type people play when they want something from him—the type who pours herself into a little red dress, who flutters her eyelashes at him over a glass of champagne, who spends the whole time hanging off his arm and giggling at his jokes.

Loki’s ice pixie impression is kind of the opposite of that, which is either a miscalculation or a refreshing new tactic.

"Is it so hard to imagine that something is not about you, Stark?" He thinks Loki wants that to sound like a crushing comeback, but can't quite muster the energy for true venom.

He wants to believe that—it would certainly make things easier—but there are the pants to consider. Is he overthinking the pants? The pants were surely strategic.

It's probably a good idea to stop thinking about Loki's pants.

"Ooo-kaaay. Change of topic." There's something else he's been turning over in his mind, after all. "You keep eating. I'm just gonna tell you what I think is going on, and you can tell me if I'm warm or cold."

When Loki doesn't object, he sits down on the stool beside her with his own cup of coffee, sideways with one elbow on the counter so he can study her reactions.

"I think when we sent you back to Asgard after New York, they locked you up safe and sound in their prison. Only, before long your... what did you call them? Your former masters. They were pissed that your little world domination plan hit some speedbumps, so they yanked you out of Asgardian jail, because they had their own ideas about a fitting punishment."

He knows he’s on thin ice here, so he rushes onward before Loki can shut him down. It's not like he really wants to think about what _punishment_ must have happened to her at their hands, anyway. He has enough nightmares of his own.

"Meanwhile, your big bro, who still wants to see the best in you, save you from yourself or whatever, figured out what was going on. It took him a while to track you down, but he finally pulled it off. Yadda, yadda, daring jailbreak, and so on. Course, you couldn't go back to Asgard at that point. You'd just be stuck back in jail, and his bleeding heart convinced him you'd suffered enough. He decides to stash you on Earth until he can figure out what to do with you, only duty calls, and he has to leave you here with a babysitter. He figures, since whatever happened to you in the past couple years has left you powerless, you aren't a big threat.

"Then, as soon as Thor's out of the way, they launch an attack. They were counting on puny humans as a bodyguard, didn't figure on Darcy calling me in behind Thor's back. Only thing I’m not sure about is if the attack was actually by your old BFFs, or someone else you've managed to piss off."

He pauses. Throughout this whole thing, Loki's kept her expression carefully neutral, mechanically lifting spoonfuls of soup to her mouth.

"Well? How'd I do?"

She puts down her spoon and gives him a round of sarcastic applause.

"A most thrilling tale, worthy of the bards of old. And, to my surprise, correct in many of the details."

"Many?"

The only response to that is an affirmative hum as she digs back into her soup.

"But of course you're not going to tell me which ones. Because why would that help us while we're on the run from someone's faceless minions?"

"I cannot tell you who sent those warriors to assault us."

"Can't because you don't know, or can't because there'd be consequences for you somehow?"

"Very good. It seems you have retained some basic suspicion of me. That is wise." Loki sounds... well, he wouldn’t go so far as to call it amused, but close. "Likewise your ability to spot evasion and lies of omission. I was beginning to wonder."

Tony starts trying to recall everything Loki's said to him over the past couple of days. It's not like he didn't assume that she was straight-up lying at least half of the time, but to exactly what extent is he being played here?

Loki smirks, obviously enjoying his paranoia. She lets the pause linger, lets him squirm, her level gaze assessing him the whole time.

He doesn’t even try and hide that he’s studying her right back, wondering if he could even spot a tell when it’s an alien lying to him.

“You cannot resist a mystery,” she says, pursing her lips.

“Well, yeah, curiosity’s kind of a big part of the whole scientific method thing. I want to know how stuff works.”

The spoon pauses in scooping up another mouthful of soup, and her calculating assessment turns to interest.

"Am I a mystery to you, Stark?”

“The biggest of all,” he offers, frankly. “Alien god from ancient times? Claiming to manipulate the world through magic? Yeah, I got no explanation for that.”

"The mortals I have met are content to accept that some things are beyond their comprehension.”

Tony snorts, leans forward, and fixes her with a look, because two can play at that game and she should know he isn’t intimidated. “You’ve never met Tony Stark, then.”

Loki leans almost imperceptibly toward him, and she’s in his personal bubble now. He stays put, determined not to let her win this game of creepy chicken. She parts her lips to speak, and he thinks that maybe she’s about to offer her crazy explanation of life, the universe, and everything. But what she says is, "No, Stark, I do not know which of your mortal factions would dare attack me."

The tension breaks, they sit back on their stools a little, and it takes Tony a few moments to wrestle his brain back on track. Oh, yeah. Right. They were talking about the incident in New Mexico. He forces himself to put the whole magic question out of his mind.

“Alien factions, then?”

“Most are insignificant, mere opportunists wishing to curry favor with the Mad Titan.”

Tony files that name away for later. Right now, he muses, “The worst case scenario for me is if it really does turn out to be S.H.I.E.L.D. who attacked us. I've put myself on the side of the bad guys here by protecting you. I mean, I didn't kill any of them, but they're not gonna thank me for taking off with their target in the middle of a fight."

"Then why did you?"

"Beats me. Loyalty to Thor, I guess. Bros before spy agencies."

"Loyalty? Please. You are no more the self-sacrificing hero than I."

_You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play..._

Tony bridles, tries and fails to hide how much that gets under his skin. "Yeah, a friend of mine told me that one time. But guess what? He was wrong, too. Oh, sure, I'm no hero, but I'm willing to make the sacrifice when it counts."

“A reckless disregard for your own wellbeing should not be mistaken for nobility, Stark. Do you also demand accolades for drinking yourself into a stupor?”

"Are you actually my ex-girlfriend now?" Wow. Okay, that came out maybe a little more bitter than he'd intended. He clears his throat, tries again. "You want to know the real reason, buddy? Thor's a crier. I couldn't face the bawling if I misplaced his precious little brother."

"I am not his brother." It comes out like a stock answer, without any real feeling behind it.

"Sister, then. Whatever." And, sure, Tony knows that's not what Loki's getting at, but at least he amuses himself, and someone's gotta crack a smile around here at some point.

"I weary of your impudence, Stark. Do you believe that I cannot harm you in my current condition?"

"Nah, you can probably still kill me with your brain. I just figure, I have to sleep sometime, and it's not like I can wear the suit while I do it. Tried that once—not as comfortable as you might think. Anyway, may as well pretend I trust you, or I'll go crazy. Besides, we're fugitives together now. Whaddaya think, Bonnie and Clyde? Thelma and Louise?"

Loki rolls her eyes.

"What? Could be fun. You, me, the open road... world's worst buddy movie..."

He flees the room before that glare can set him on fire.

***

Bruce is here, seven minutes earlier than promised, and Tony waves him into the house, shuts the door carefully behind him. Even manages not to look up and down the street for dark-tinted SUVs or flying alien motorcycle chariots.

"I owe you one, Jolly Green."

"You owed me several already—I didn't even have the chance to pack a change of clothes when you called me out here. My toothbrush is from the hotel gift shop."

Tony just hands him a duffle bag he's already packed with stuff from the safe house closets, and flashes Bruce his media grin.

"Are these... are these clean socks? Be still my beating heart, Tony, I haven't seen a pair of clean socks in two days."

Tony holds up a hand to cut him off. "I don't want to hear about your star-crossed love affair with socks, or any other type of undergarment. Now come on. We gotta get going."

"What's the rush?"

"I dialed Jarvis this morning from the burner phone. I set up this protocol where if I think we're being monitored, I type a code on the touch pad to let him know it's me. He responded with the code that means S.H.I.E.L.D.'s got through to my final security layer and is trying to crack it." Tony's stuffing crap into a bag while he talks: flashlights, a kitchen lighter, zip ties, pocket knife...

"Jeez. And here I thought Natasha was paranoid."

"It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you."

"So, uh, if you're so sure they're onto you, how do you know they're not already here?"

"I don't. But Jarvis gave me the 'hack in progress' code, not the 'compromised' one. I had Jarvis transfer his memory of Tuesday night to an encrypted file on my private server, so people can’t get the information from him right now, but I can restore the data later. I think that’s what they’re trying to crack, which means we probably have at least a few more hours before they figure out where he sent me. But we have to move."

With that, he's at a closed bedroom door, knocking softly.

"Hey, Pixie Chix, you ready to get out of here?"

"Pixie... what?" Bruce is baffled.

"You'll see."

The door cracks open, and Loki's standing there, more or less upright, clutching her own bag awkwardly. Tony catches Bruce's raised eyebrows; waits for the slow blink, blink; winks at his friend; and grabs Loki's bag. He doesn't offer her an arm to lean on, since she's been waving off all his efforts at helping. To her credit, she's actually making pretty good time as they head down the path to Bruce's rental car. Tony amuses himself by opening the rear door and ushering Loki in chivalrously. The death glare he receives in return barely rates a 4.9 on the Trickster Scale.

"Really, Bruce? A Honda Civic?"

"What's wrong with it?"

"It's beige."

"I, uh, I thought we were supposed to be laying low..."

"There's laying low, and then there's slumming it. I bet this thing tops out at like 75."

"Laying low, Tony. Laying. Low. Besides, driver picks the wheels."

"No, it's driver picks the music."

"I pick the music too. The Other Guy doesn't appreciate your taste."

Tony likes that he can joke about the Hulk now, even if he does it with a self-deprecating, uncertain smile.

There's silence for a while until they're safely on the freeway, heading east on I-8. It's going to be a long trip back to the east coast, a couple more days at least, and he’s already been gone three. But everyone they trust is there right now, or in Asgard—he needs to figure out how to upgrade his Starkphone for those reeeeally long-distance calls—and checking onto a flight is not worth the risk.

The trick is going to be staying off S.H.I.E.L.D.’s radar. Either they officially sent the goons, or they have a mole, and Tony's going to find out which, which means going where his friends and resources are.

What he wouldn't give to see Pepper right now. Because she's terrifyingly competent and will come up with about six plans of action on the fly, not for any other reason. Other reasons, like feeling incomplete since someone left you, would be unhealthy, or so Pepper would say. She'd say that dwelling on it is harmful and self-destructive.

There has to be some irony in trying to prove you're not stuck in the past, in order to stick it to your ex. And why did he put the bag of vodka all the way back there in the trunk?

Bruce cuts into this joyous thought-spiral by catching Loki's eye in the rearview.

"So, uh. You're looking better?"

"You mean my recovery, or...?"

Bruce blushes. Oh, great, Loki's teasing. She must be feeling more like herself.

"Your recovery, yes," Bruce mumbles eventually.

"The Aesir would say that it is agonizingly slow by the usual standards."

"Normally you'd have your magic to help you along?"

"I’d use magic, or the healers would attend me with a healing stone."

"But even without that, your physiology allows you to heal rapidly."

"With magic, I could have removed the bullet, but until that was done, my natural healing could not begin. I suppose I have you to thank for that."

Tony thinks he's spent enough time around Loki by now to recognize when something's off in her tone, and right now she sounds anything but grateful.

He hears Loki's words again, from right after regaining consciousness: _You imagine that you have done me a favor, Stark?_

Great. The last thing he needs is a suicidal god on his hands.

***

A seedy roach motel in the Texas panhandle has got to be Tony's least favorite part of this whole adventure so far—and that includes the bit where he was flying blind with one boot broken and a dying god slung over his shoulder.

He looks at his watch—4:30 a.m., which, given they spent all day driving and checked into this place at a time most motel owners would have shooed them off with a shotgun, means he's managed at least a couple hours of sleep. That’s more than he expected with a spring digging into his back, so maybe his time would be better spent planning, or tweaking his armor, or… basically anything but lying here in the dark anticipating a nightmare. He swings his legs out of the bed, rubs at his eyes, and freezes when he sees that the other bed is untouched, sheets still tucked in and bedspread smooth.

Well, shit, if Loki wasn't going to appreciate the space they gave her to rest and heal up, why the hell's he been spooning with Bruce all night?

He runs a hand over his face and tugs on some pants, careful not to wake the sleeping man behind him. If crazy-cakes makes him search for more than 20 minutes, crazy-cakes is going to have hell to pay.

The motel's on the edge of a shitty little podunk town, not much around but dust, grit, and low scrub. He walks around the building, mistaking a bush or two for Loki, before finally he spots a hunched figure at the back of the lot, as far as she can get from the motel sign's lurid splash of neon. She stares out into the dark at a twist of tired trees, and Tony approaches from the side, taking care to let his footfalls sound out. Last thing he wants to do is startle her into haring off.

Loki's sitting on a rock, bundled up in a hoodie but still with the bare feet, which are dirty and maybe even bloody, it's hard to tell in this light. She seems oblivious to that, though, her attention focused on something she's cradling in her lap: one of the bottles of vodka he had stashed in the trunk, three fourths empty already.

He sits down next to her and takes the bottle for a swig. The cheap liquor burns on its way down.

"I was once the King of Asgard, you know," Loki says conversationally, speech only slightly slurred. "People _feared_ me."

If it occurs to any part of Tony's brain to laugh at the idea of Tinker Bell here being the king of anywhere, at least it's a part that's well-buried beneath his admittedly shriveled instinct for self-preservation.

Well, at least talking is better than sulking.

He squeezes her shoulder awkwardly and hands the bottle back. Considers and discards a number of quips, settles for, "Oh yeah?"

"'Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?'" she says with the air of quoting something.

It sounds familiar, but in a way that makes Tony not want to examine it too hard. Then—shit. He hears it in his own voice, but distantly, as if from another lifetime. Which, in a sense, it was.

"That's one of mine. You been following me on Twitter or something?" It's uncomfortable hearing his own words come out of Loki's mouth. They sound like they'd fit too well with one of those villain monologues.

"They called you the Merchant of Death, did they not?"

"That's not who I am anymore."

"You are ashamed of your past, Tony Stark. Why?"

"A lot of people got hurt because of what I did." He waves his hand vaguely, aiming for 'dismissive', but getting 'defensive' instead. "If you're really that interested, I think the press conferences are online..."

"I wish to hear it from you."

There really isn't enough liquor left in the bottle for this, but he takes a deep breath and tries to find the words anyway. "I had all this power, all this money, and I just used it to get more. Didn't care what people did with my toys, as long as I got to keep tinkering, as long as the money and the liquor and the women kept flowing. People were playthings or obstructions. The one person I thought had my back sold me out... and I deserved it.

"So yeah, you could say I'm ashamed, but I'm not wallowing in that, though; too much to do. Not everyone gets a second chance."

"Do you really believe that you get to decide how to make up for those deeds?" Loki spits. "Dress in your suit of iron, charge into battle, be hailed as a hero? Pitiful self-indulgence. The fates demand blood, Tony Stark."

"Oh, I've paid in blood alright. Since you've been doing your research, you probably heard about when I got tortured in a cave for three months. Oh yeah, and that time when I saved Manhattan from a nuke, is that ringing any bells? I was prepared to die. Wanted to, even. But that's not what happened, is it? And I'm sorry if it's not _poetic_ enough for you, but since I'm still around I might as well—"

—And he breaks off, because it suddenly occurs that pushing _Tony's_ self-destruct button is really, really not what this is all about.

"Huh."

There's a heavy pause, while he tries to figure out how the conversation got here, and where's he's supposed to go with it now. To say this kind of thing is not his forte is like saying that Bruce can get a little prickly sometimes. So of course, he's the one sitting here trying to talk down a self-loathing alien god. He doesn't know what Loki's going to do if this conversation goes wrong—drink herself to death, is what it looks like at the moment, and that’s probably the least destructive option—but maybe there's an opportunity here for things to go a different direction.

He tries again, more carefully this time. "Point is, I don't really give a crap what the fates demand; I make my own destiny." He reaches out a tentative hand, and when she doesn't look like she's going to cut it off, lets it rest on her arm. "Maybe you should try it some time?"

He nearly withers at the look of scorn Loki treats him to. "I am a god, Stark. Perhaps you are beneath the fates' notice, but I most certainly am not. I am, and will always be, Loki."

"So, what, you're just going to let yourself be destiny's bitch?"

Loki barks a bitter laugh. "Let myself? I have done nothing but spit in the face of destiny! Yet each turn I take brings me closer to the fate I am trying to resist."

"Maybe you need to take some pointers from an impudent mortal, if destiny doesn't give a crap about me."

He feels her gaze on him, and looks up into an uncomfortably appraising stare.

After a long silence, during which she seems to be considering it, she gives a quiet, resigned sigh. "I cannot be what I am not," she says, and takes a long pull from the bottle, spluttering a little as she lowers it.

"Easy there, champ." Tony takes it back, gently. The more he drinks out of this bottle, the less will be left for Loki to drink herself into a coma. At least, that’s the reason he gives himself for the size of the swig he takes.

”Do you remember the first time we spoke?”

“How could I forget? You turned into Pepper and made me snort beer up my nose.”

“No, before that.”

Tony’s breath catches. Of course he remembers, but he’s been trying not to. “In the tower….”

“You were the only one who talked to me, did you realize that?”

“Like hell. What about Fury? Natasha? Thor?”

“No. They threatened, they interrogated, they manipulated. You spoke to me as a rational being.”

He can feel her looking at him, and resists the urge to shift away under the pressure of that gaze. “I stalled for time.”

“You offered me a drink,” she says, closing her hand around his on the bottle neck.

She moves in closer, and he thinks it’s to take the vodka back for another swig, but suddenly her mouth is on his, all hot breath and wet lips, and the bottle falls to the pavement beside them, spilling its remaining few drops as she crawls into his lap.

The reason he doesn't push her off right away, he tells himself later, is one hundred percent because she took him by surprise. One hundred percent.

But—

"Is this not what you wanted, Tony Stark?" she growls against his lips, and without any intervention from his conscious mind, he's kissing her back hungrily. He's suddenly very aware of her fingers, snaking their way over his chest, trailing over the thin fabric of his tank top, lingering near the arc reactor, and then downward to the waistband of his pants. Her other arm is wrapped around him, gripping his hair to keep him where she wants him—a reminder that even when she’s in this form he wouldn’t stand a chance against her superhuman strength if it came down to it.

There’s nothing gentle or intimate about the kiss, just a raw ferocity that has him groaning into her mouth.

Truth be told, supermodel looks and T&A only go so far with Tony. He does have a type, and that type is—always has been— _terrifying_ , _crazy_ , and _broken_. Maybe that's the real reason things were never going to work out with Pepper; one out of three is just not close enough. He always felt too comfortable around her, too safe. This swing from melancholy, to malice, to sheer animal hunger, on the other hand—this sends a jolt of desire through his entire system. He wants to breathe in Loki's crazy intensity, wants to fill himself with it, doesn't care if they find him dead in the morning on the side of a Texas highway.

He flashes back to freefall, shards of glass glittering in the sunlight around him, the rising certainty that this time... this time he's not going to make it. And something in the back of his mind is laughing and laughing.

It would be easier just to go with it. Who is he to reject a crazy god? That sounds more suicidal than making out with her, or wherever this is going, in a motel parking lot. Yeah, self-preservation definitely says give her what she's after. Right?

The words _self-preservation_ tickle at the edge of a memory, and suddenly he's in his bedroom—his and Pepper's, it was then—and she's pleading with him tearfully just to stop, to stop doing this, because when he does these crazy reckless self-destructive things it's not just him he's hurting anymore. He's arguing that he’s only doing his duty as Iron Man, that he's not putting himself in any more danger than he needs to, but he knows he's lying to her, and she knows it too.

He knows that every time he risks his life, there's a moment of relief when he thinks that maybe soon he won't have to keep making the decision every day to get up, and have relationships, and act like a person. Maybe soon he won't need to keep throwing himself into his work just to keep at bay the memories of betrayal, of torture, of giving up hope.

And it's the thought of that torture, struggling for breath, icy water filling his nose and lungs, that finally douses his libido. It's not his usual M.O. to look a bad idea in the eye and push it away, but then he imagines Thor's disappointment when he finds out Tony took advantage of his little sis (bro, whatever) who has just been tortured for fucking months...

"No." He grabs her hand, gently as he can. "I mean, yes, this is what I want, but..."

The expression in Loki's faces closes off like a window shuttering, and she's on her feet before he even notices her moving. Is she... hurt by the rejection? He honestly can't tell.

"Maybe some time when you're not drunk off your ass?"

"Don't flatter yourself, Stark. This was a one-time offer." She stalks back toward their room, and he can only hope she doesn't let the door bang loud enough to wake Bruce.

Tony groans. How come an encounter with the _god of lies and mischief_ is when he suddenly decides to start spouting off truths and grow a conscience? It's not as if his every nerve wasn’t straining to give in to her and see what happened. Well, now he's this worked up there's no way he's going back inside to curl up on a bed with Bruce, and no way he'll get back to sleep, so he just sits there on the rock with his head in his hands and waits for the dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> O hai shapeshifting. I feel like this warrants a Note on Pronouns. (My second fic to require one... I'm sensing a trend.)
> 
> I generally hate when gender-change fics start referring to someone by different pronouns just because they change outward form, but that's when the character is forcibly gender-swapped and would clearly still think of themselves as the same gender that they've always been. It's never addressed directly in the fic, but my Loki is pretty flexible when it comes to gender, and I'll be using 'he' when he takes male form, and 'she' when she takes female form. That's how Loki would think of themselves, and my PoV characters' attitudes are also flexible enough wrt gender that their narration will reflect that, too. I can't speak for other characters who aren't as accommodating, but at least we don't have to be inside their heads!


	5. Frail in the Kill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A wild Hawkeye appears! And our first split-PoV chapter.

## Darcy

Darcy unlocks her phone and scrolls about with her thumb to make sure she's on the right street. This is stupid. She knows she's on the right street, it's just, maybe she shouldn't have come. Maybe she should turn around and get back on the subway to Manhattan, slink back into her guest room at Avengers Tower like she never left. 

What if he's pissed that she looked him up? It's not like they know each other, not really.  

This building cannot be it. 

She flicks her phone on again, double-checks the address. 

No, this is it alright. Not what she expected from a guy who could be living in the lap of Midtown luxury, courtesy of his pal the billionaire, if he so chose. Just a regular-looking walk-up apartment building on a regular-looking street in Bed-Stuy, which, if she's honest with herself, is not all that regular-looking of a neighborhood, not to a Midwestern girl like Darcy Lewis, but she guesses it looks pretty regular to the people who live here. What she's getting at here is, this is a place where normal people live, not Avengers, not S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, not friends of Tony Stark. 

She nods to some people on the stairs as she winds her way up. Normal people. 

That's the door she's looking for, so she knocks before she can change her mind. It's yanked open a second later by a young woman in a purple tank top, hair plastered to her forehead with sweat. 

"Oh. Um. I've come at a bad time," says Darcy. Crap, even worse than barging in unannounced on people who are barely acquaintances is barging in while they're in the middle of something waaaaay more fun than what she's here to talk about.   
 

"Nah, not busy really. Come on in." 

The woman walks back inside with the fluid grace of a martial artist and grabs a bottle of water from the fridge, leaving Darcy to close the door behind her. The woman chugs half the bottle of water in seconds flat, picks up a bow, and walks back into the lounge area. So apparently she didn't walk in on crazy monkey sex? Just... indoor archery practice. Sure, whatever. Where else would you fire lethal projectiles but inside your apartment?

"Mind if I keep shooting while you talk?" 

"Uh, no, go ahead." 

Darcy watches the flex of her muscles as she draws the bowstring back, notes the ease of her stance, the flow of her breath as she looses the arrow, the practiced way she reaches back to the quiver for another. 

"Just so you know, Clint's not here," she says, loosing a third and fourth arrow to cluster in the same spot as the first two. 

"Oh. Sorry, I'll get out of your hair then." 

"Don't you dare! There's a story in this and I want to hear it. 'Sides, I'm just about done here." She fires off the remaining arrows in her quiver and grabs a towel. "Kate Bishop." 

"Darcy Lewis," says Darcy, shaking the proffered hand. "So... you and Clint, huh?" 

Kate gives an undignified snort. "What, that man-child? No, I just come over here when he's away to feed his dog and work out." 

"Oh, thank God," says Darcy before she can think. Then blushes. "I was just thinking you're a little, you know, young for him." 

"Not that you'd know it, way he acts sometimes." 

Darcy returns her easy grin. It's true, Kate is way too young for Clint—twenty at the absolute outside, probably younger—but she has the self-possessed ease of someone much older, a supreme confidence that Darcy dreams of having one day if she grows up. She assesses Kate’s clothes, which individually must have cost five times as much as everything Darcy's wearing put together, even if they were bought for the specific purpose of being sweated in. Money does give some people that confidence, but she can tell Kate's comes from her innate badassery. Besides, compare and contrast with Tony Stark, whose layers of personas, now that she's met him enough times, she can see right through to the chewy core of insecurity and doubt. 

"I'm letting him be my mentor, training to be the newer, better Hawkeye," Kate explains, nodding at the bow. "Gives him a sense of purpose and stability." Wink. "How did you meet him?" 

"I'm... not really sure how much I can say." 

"Eh, come on. I'm practically an Avenger already. Have my own team of them. I can handle world in danger, national security breach stuff." 

Darcy makes a show of thinking it over. Truth be told, she'd love to share this with someone who knows enough about superheroing to get it, but isn't directly involved. She needs perspective. "Okay. S.H.I.E.L.D. can never know I talked to you about this." 

Kate makes the lip-zipping gesture. 

"You know anything about New Mexico a few years back?" 

Kate's nodding. "When Thor arrived, right?" 

"Uh-huh. How much has Clint told you about that whole time?" 

"Ohmigod! You're _Darcy Lewis_!" 

"Yeah, I thought we already covered that." 

"Jane Foster's lab assistant, bff, and snarky sidekick!" 

"Sidekick—hey!" Darcy pretends to pout. Well, maybe it isn't a pretense. "...Although, snarky I will give you." 

"But I get the feeling you didn't just drop in to reminisce over beers." When Darcy hesitates, she goes on. "Clint's on a mission, don't know when he's getting back, which is why he asked me to feed Lucky. If you need someone with awesome archery skills, I'm your girl. Probably better than Clint, even if I have to pretend otherwise. Ego, you know." 

Darcy can't help but laugh. She doesn't know how much archery she'll need doing, but she's starting to feel that Kate's going to be way more entertaining than Clint anyhow. 

"I was going to ask for his help on something. I don't want it getting back to Asgard, or S.H.I.E.L.D., not until I know what we're dealing with. Sure, I know Clint's technically S.H.I.E.L.D., but he keeps plenty of stuff from those guys. And he's got to have picked up some superspy skills from Natasha over the years."

"He wouldn't have been your first choice, though?" Damn, the girl's shrewd. 

Darcy twists her mouth. "I'd have called Tony before anyone. But he's not available right now, and that's kinda the problem." 

That sobers Kate right up. "Missing?"

“Going on five days.”

Kate's all business. "What have you got?" 

She lays it all out: Thor arriving with Loki in tow; calling Tony for babysitting duties; coming home to find them gone. It's a relief, actually, to talk about it. She finishes by pulling a collection of zip-loc bags out of her purse. 

"I don't remember collecting these. I remember I planned to go CSI all over the crime scene, but then Thor was suddenly there and we were having to jet. I remember kicking myself for forgetting to do it, wondering how bad Erik would kill me if I called him to courier us some. It wasn't until I got on the plane that I found all this stuff in my cargo pants, no idea how it got there. But, see, this—" she hands Kate the blue synthetic strap "—is definitely S.H.I.E.L.D. chic, and this—" pulling up a picture on her phone "—is totally, 100%, Asgardian Ren Faire." 

Kate takes the phone and zooms in on the photo, frowning. It's two Asgardian guys, one of whom could take any human bodybuilder without breaking a sweat, and a blonde chick, also Asgardian, who looks like she takes the phrase "feminine wiles" way too seriously.

"No idea who they are. No memory of taking the photo. But when I checked the metadata, the time stamp puts it just before Jane told me we had to leave."

"Why not ask Thor if he knows them?" 

Darcy shifts in her seat a bit. "This might be crazy, but... think about it. I have a gap in my memory, during which I apparently had a close encounter of the Asgardian kind, and suddenly Thor's there?"

"You mean, what if he's in on it?"

Darcy just nods miserably.

"Jane should hear about this,” Kate insists.  
 

"Well, sure, soon as I've got something concrete. What am I going to say, 'Hey, Jane, your boyfriend is in on this plot to disappear his co-worker and his own brother?' See, and now I put it like that, it doesn't even make sense. He was trying to help Loki, right?"

"Was he?"

"But he's a total teddy-bear. Scheming is Loki’s thing. Thor’s all ‘swing hammer, eat pop-tart.’ He couldn’t be involved."

"Couldn’t he?"

"Stop it with your pointed rhetorical quest—what are you doing?”

"Girl, you are a mess," says Kate, rifling through the hall closet for something. "Aha!" She pulls down a scooter helmet and tosses it to Darcy, who catches it reflexively. "I knew Clint had one of these somewhere." She waves Darcy through the door ahead of her. "After you."

"After me where?"

"You have a mystery. I am nosey and resourceful. Together, we fight crime!"

Darcy protests all the way down the stairs. "No, really, you don't have to do this. Probably shouldn't do this. Shouldn't you be, like, in school or something? Thor's gonna kill me for dragging someone else in on it. Clint's gonna kill me if I get you killed. Jane's gonna kill me if I get _me_ killed..."

Kate just flashes that grin at her. "Darcy, you're not going to change my mind. Trust me on this. If we're crime-fighting partners, you need to know that I’m a spoiled little rich girl who always gets my way." She's pulling on her own helmet—purple, of course, to match the scooter—and soon they're hurtling out of the alley behind Clint's building, Darcy's arms wrapped around Kate's waist, yelling to make themselves heard over the road noise.

Her new friend is practically a force of nature, no use fighting it, so Darcy decides to give in and accept it as an inevitability. And once she's done that, it's just a quick hop, skip, and jump to feeling excited about teaming up with someone who goes out and does things rather than spending their whole life analyzing space-waves or whatever, someone who drags Darcy into the fun whether or not she wants it rather than telling her she should sit this one out and let the superheroes take care of it.

"Where are we going?" Darcy shouts.

"We need access to S.H.I.E.L.D. files without going through S.H.I.E.L.D., right?"

"Yeah."

"And we need to analyze some blood samples and compare them against Stark's DNA, and Loki's as well if that's on file anywhere, yeah?"

"Yeah..."

"And, as a bonus, we need to see if there isn't some way to track Stark, like something he implanted in case of emergencies, or some alias he set himself up with?"

"What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking it'd be awesome if there were someone, or some _thing_ , that kept track of all that stuff, who could outsmart government information security, who had Stark's best interests at heart and wasn't affiliated with S.H.I.E.L.D. or Asgard or anyone but Tony Stark."

"Oh." Darcy doesn't get it, and then she does. "...OHHH! But, you know Jarvis isn't going to let us into any of that info, right?"

"We'll just have to persuade him. I figure he's going to want to help us if we're helping Stark."

All the way up in the elevator, Darcy comes up with stories to give if they run into anyone. She hasn't felt this nervous sneaking someone into her place since Justin Mills in 9th grade. _Kate's come over to help me with my history homework..._ Yeah, that'll work. She hopes especially that they don't run into Natasha; no way will she be able to put one over on a former Soviet spy. She can, in theory, bring herself to lie to Captain America's face, and she's sure she could make him buy it, but the very thought makes her cringe with hypothetical guilt.

Their luck holds. They bypass the Avengers' common floor, head right for Darcy’s guest suite, and hop on the bed, cross-legged and conspiratorial. Wow, these high school reminiscences must really be getting to her. Only now, instead of bottles of brightly colored nail polish scattered between them, it's bags full of dirt crusted with dried blood, and spent bullet casings.

"Hi, um, Jarvis?" Don't look at the ceiling. It's ridiculous. He's not in the ceiling.

"Can I help you, Ms. Lewis?"

She looks at the ceiling.

"So... you really don't know where Tony is at the moment, huh?"

"I do not."

"Can you access S.H.I.E.L.D. files?" Kate butts in.

"That would be a breach of S.H.I.E.L.D. security, Ms. Bishop."

"So that's a yes, then," she says, a sly little grin growing on her lips. "Oh, I like you, Jarvis. I didn't even have to introduce myself."

"I have extensive files on all persons designated as 'superheroes', including the Young Avengers." If an AI could preen, Darcy could swear Jarvis is doing so right now.

"Ooh, I have a file? What does it say?"

"You are not authorized to access that information."

"Getting off-topic, Kate..."

"Yeah, sorry, sorry." Kate turns over one of the evidence bags in her hand, thinking. The dark blue leather strap. "Okay, so if you can get into S.H.I.E.L.D., can you confirm this is from one of their uniforms? And, if it is, can you find the orders that sent them after Loki? We might be able to figure out where they've taken him and Stark."

"I'm afraid you are not authorized to access that information, Ms. Bishop." And, before Darcy can open her mouth to ask, "Nor you, Ms. Lewis."

Kate’s getting frustrated. "Let me get this straight. You can find out, but you can't tell us the answer and let us help Stark... because Stark programmed you not to?" 

"That is correct."

"Can you show me the dictionary entry for 'irony'?"

Jarvis does, but Darcy's pretty sure that's because he also knows the dictionary definition of 'sarcasm'.

"That's assuming they're captured, though,” Darcy says.

"Yeah, okay, different tack," says Kate. "I bet Mr. Stark had you set him up with some fake identities. Can you find out if they've been used lately? Like, in the past two days?"

"Apologies, Ms. Bishop. You are not—"

"Authorized to access that information, yeah," Kate finishes in unison with him. She drops her face into her hands to muffle a frustrated growl.

"Maybe we're going about this all wrong," says Darcy. "Jarvis, there’s gotta be someone you trust, other than Tony, right? So if I tell you the whole story, you can make the call of what to do about it.”

She does, and then she lays out all her evidence on top of the dresser so that he can scan it, including the cell phone photo. She strongly suggests that it's a bad idea to alert S.H.I.E.L.D. or Thor directly, but doesn't try and give him orders. There's a pause, during which she thinks she can hear him thinking.

"Please remain here," he finally says. "Ms. Potts is on her way to join you."

The two women share a look. Are they going to get chewed out for poking around where they shouldn't?

"Jarvis says you've got something on Tony?" Pepper says before she's all the way in the room. She's pulling off 'calm and efficient' pretty well, but her knuckles are white where she clutches her tablet. “And Jarvis, send the results to my tablet, please." 

The AI says nothing about Pepper's clearance, just helpfully provides data. Pepper doesn't stop Darcy and Kate from looking over her shoulder at the screen, though: a DNA analysis on the left, and the contents of a classified S.H.I.E.L.D. file on the right, a familiar photo topping the page.

They all let out a breath at pretty much the same time.

"The blood is from Loki? All the samples?"

"Yes, Ms. Potts."

"So Tony's probably not hurt?" Darcy feels her stomach unclench a little.

"He wasn't bleeding, at least. But it doesn't get us any closer to finding out where he is," Kate points out.

"Any luck on the aliases, Jarvis?" Pepper asks.

"I'm afraid that none of the credit cards or false identification I set up for Mr. Stark have been used in the past two days."

"Oh.” A silence hangs in the air as they realize they’ve exhausted their last lead. Except—

“Wait a minute…"

The other two turn their heads to look at Darcy.

"Dr. Banner is missing as well, isn't he? Did Tony get him any ID?"

After a few moments, Jarvis flashes something else up on Pepper's tablet. A driver's license with Bruce's face and someone else's name, and a map on which a red dot flashes somewhere in the middle of Ohio.

They all three exchange looks, and into the silence, Jarvis says, with uncharacteristic hesitation:

“Ms. Potts, I think…”

“Yes, Jarvis, go ahead.”

“I believe I have detected a security breach. This information is being monitored.”

“Who by?”

“I am uncertain; the intruder is able to disguise its origin, and even to confuse me about the existence of the intrusion. However, that in itself would indicate a sophisticated individual or organization.”

“S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Darcy says with a sudden certainty.

“It is possible, Ms. Lewis.”

“We have to get there first,” says Kate, the color bleeding out of her face. “Who’s to say they won’t consider Tony acceptable collateral damage?”

Pepper is all action, striding out of the door and issuing instructions into her phone about preparing a jet and a driver to the airport.  She doesn't shoo them away, so the two younger women follow along at her heels.

And that's how Darcy finds herself, for the second time in as many days, on an urgent private Stark Industries flight, tapping her fingernails nervously on the armrest.

## Tony

Having one of the most recognizable faces on the planet means a lot of sitting back and waiting for Bruce to take care of things: checking into and out of motels, changing rental cars, paying for gas, stuff like that. He hates making his friend do everything. Okay, well, it's one part guilt, and several parts unease at not being in control. What if Bruce messes this up? Tony's the one with the charm and the media-friendly lies ready on the tip of his tongue. He has a hard time putting himself in someone else's hands, especially when the stakes are so high. 

He's being unfair. He reminds himself that Bruce actually has way more experience being on the run than he does, forces himself to sit back and take a deep breath.

They're about an hour out of the little Ohio town where they stayed last night, in yet another new rental car, and waiting for Bruce to finish paying for gas so they can leave, and he's on edge. Can't really say why; maybe this whole trip is starting to get to him, being in close quarters for days with the guy who tried to enslave his planet and threw him out of a window. Time to break the tension, or at least cause a different kind of tension so he can stop thinking about it.

"Why so glum, Mini-Me?" He tries to catch Loki's eye in the rearview. "Maybe Bruce'll buy you a candy bar if you promise it won't ruin your dinner."

It's probably a bad idea to try and get a rise out of their resident psychopath, but he's barely said a word since the incident at the motel in the small hours of yesterday morning, and anything's better than that seething silence. 

Oh yeah, and he's back to being the teen wonder. Either because sulking looks slightly less ridiculous on him this way, or to prove to Tony that his offer really is off the table.

"This is a farce," Loki says from the back seat, his tone impossibly cold for that young voice. "I am recovered; why should I continue with you on this absurd journey?"

"You tell me, Harry Potter. You’ve forgotten how to dress yourself without magic? You miss your favorite brother? Or maybe you just can't get enough of that patented Tony Stark magnetism."

The last suggestion finally prompts a scathing snort.

"I should gut you for your impudence." Loki's says offhandedly, and somehow that's more chilling than any ranting and yelling. Tony could imagine him doing exactly that, not even breaking a sweat, and casually tossing the corpse aside without a second thought.

Just to prove he's not intimidated, Tony makes a show of leaning back on the headrest and closing his eyes until he hears the car door open. 

"Finally," he grumps at Bruce. "Can we get this show on the road?" 

Wait. That wasn’t the driver's door. His eyes snap open. 

Loki's being dragged from the back seat, hissing, spitting, and clawing like a cat. He catches Tony's eye, and the look of utter desperation and savagery he sees there has Tony launching himself out of the car before he can think, hauling one of Loki's captors off him. There are four, all dressed in the carefully neutral khakis and polo shirts of a plain-clothes cop or government agent. He files that away for later, but right now he's slugging a second guy in the face and wishing his armor wasn't stashed in pieces in the trunk. 

He's vaguely aware of people screaming and running, and of another vehicle pulling up, more people pouring out of it, and unlike the civilians from the gas station, they are running toward the action. The weirdest part is, instead of helping the polo-shirt guys, the newcomers are firing at them.

Two of the polo-shirt guys break off to return fire, and Tony thinks maybe his backup has arrived, but then he registers what the new team look like: they’re firing energy weapons and wearing slick sci-fi wear that wouldn’t be that weird except that they’re all wearing the same thing. Not military uniforms, just standardized. They look human… almost. He can’t quite put his finger on what’s off about them, but then again he’s kinda got his hands full right now.

A roar sounds from inside the convenience store. 

 _That's it, Brucie baby, let the Hulk out._  

He's been training with Natasha and Clint, so he can make his punches count, but he's no ninja assassin, so without his armor this is a losing battle and he knows it. He breaks his opponent's nose, and when he senses another coming up behind him, he throws out an elbow that catches them in the stomach, if the winded grunt is anything to go by. He whirls around to face the new attacker, forgetting momentarily about the first. If he can only hold out until the Hulk gets here... 

And suddenly he's on his knees and there's a blade to his throat and he knows his fight is over. An overwhelming sense of failure floods him. He's failed Bruce, failed Thor, failed everyone. He spends what he's certain is going to be his final thought hoping that he bought Loki some time, and then there's a flash of pain, and warmth seeps downward from his neck as a fireball explodes around him. 

Then something hits him with the force of a truck, and he's aware of a face hovering over his, green eyes burning with a fury to rival the Hulk, and fingers wrapped around his throat. _Oh shit oh shit oh shit…_ is all his brain comes up with. That, and a frantic scrabbling of his own fingers, which feel weak and brittle compared to the iron grip around his neck. Bad things happen when there are fingers around his neck. The glass breaking, and the freefall, and the seconds upon seconds to imagine broken bones, arteries ripped loose, and blood pumping into internal cavities...

Wait—no, that isn’t right. The fingers may have the same iron grip, but they are not choking the life out of him. There are no windows; he isn’t falling. There’s just the hard ground, and the encroaching unconsciousness, and the slow, agonized knitting together of ragged flesh at his throat.

Finally, the green-eyed figure turns away, and Tony rolls over, holds out a grasping hand, but his torn throat can't form words. He can only watch as the figure grows taller, stands up straighter, as the air ripples and familiar black and green armor unfurls itself around him, as a golden helmet forms around his head, and those horns. Those ridiculous horns.  

The tall, lean form stalks back toward the carnage. As he picks up an assailant by the throat ( _"You will all fall before me!"_ ), and throws him, easy as bowling ( _Freefall... glass shards glittering..._ ) to knock down two more. The image of Loki is consumed by flames, and by creeping unconsciousness, _and something in the back of his mind is laughing and laughing._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry not sorry about the cliffhanger!
> 
> Thank you for all the kudos and lovely comments. I'm working at a convention this weekend, so I'll still post updates, but I won't have time to answer comments until Monday.


	6. Keep the Truth Confined

## Darcy

They flew here on the fastest commercial jet available to humankind, then their driver breaks about a hundred and fifty traffic laws, and they are still too late. Well, they arrive before the local authorities, and even before S.H.I.E.L.D., but far too late to help. Bruce is looking very green, and clutching a limp, bloody body to his chest.

Pepper’s the first out of the car, running full-pelt toward the gas station forecourt, where Hulk has dragged Tony clear of mangled cars and fire. Darcy and Kate scramble after her.

“Is he—” Pepper says. “Can I see?”

There’s a long pause, filled with the roar of fire, and people yelling, and Hulk’s slow breathing. He raises his head to hold Pepper’s gaze, and his eyes are full of pain. Darcy takes a deep breath, forces her spine straight so she won’t recoil.

When he speaks, he sounds like nothing so much as a scared, wounded child. “TONY HURT.”

 _Hurt_. Not dead, hurt.

Darcy shares a look of relief with Kate.

Pepper reaches out a gentle hand, and lays it on top of Hulk’s where he’s cradling Tony’s head. “You did well, Hulk. You saved him.” Her voice hardly wavers.

Hulk smiles, which is kind of a terrifying sight with all the giant teeth.         

That’s when Darcy catches the sirens in the distance. “Uh, guys? If we could hurry things up a little…”

Pepper doesn’t take her eyes off the giant green guy. It makes Darcy think of people who work with trained tigers; you can ask a tiger to do a trick for you, but if it says no, you better not push. Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking it’s tame.

“Hulk?” she says. “Will you help Tony again? We need to get him out of here quickly.” She gestures to the car behind her. “And then we need Bruce back. Will you let Bruce come back, so he can give Tony some medical attention?”

Hulk thinks about it for an agonizingly long time while the sirens get louder. If the locals are almost here, then S.H.I.E.L.D. can’t be far behind. Finally, he huffs, nods, and lays Tony in the back seat like an overprotective parent with a brand new baby. Then, he begins to shrink back down, fading from bright green to Bruce’s usual slight tan.

For such a shy guy, he sure doesn’t seem to be fazed by public semi-nudity, but then Darcy guesses he’s probably used to it by now.  Mostly he’s blinking dazedly at the transformation and the chaos around him, but when his eyes land on Tony he gets to work right away.

The first of the emergency vehicles pulls up then, and Darcy grab's Kate’s wrist. “Come on,” she says, pulling her into the chaos.

“Hey, yeah, we got injured over there, and there,” she yells to the EMTs, pointing everywhere but at Pepper’s car. “This guy’s definitely dead, but I thought I saw a body in that SUV—might still be alive.”

Kate’s quick on the uptake, and starts talking in the commanding tone of someone who’s gotten her way her whole life. She also knows some actual first aid terminology, so the EMTs nod and go where she tells them to.

They turn back to Pepper’s car, where Bruce is finishing his cursory medical exam.

“He’s stable,” he says. “No idea how he didn’t bleed out from the throat injury, but it’s coagulated way quicker than I would have thought possible. Not much I can do for him without equipment, though. Is S.H.I.E.L.D. on its way?”

“No!” Pepper says, seeming to startle herself with her vehemence. “No S.H.I.E.L.D. I’ll have doctors waiting for us at the Tower. Is he safe to move?”

Bruce purses his lips. “Guess he’ll have to be,” he sighs.

Darcy watches this exchange go down. “Fat lot of good we did,” she grumbles to Kate.

“We stopped S.H.I.E.L.D. from getting to him. I’d say that’s good.” Kate's hand rubs across her back soothingly, lands on her opposite shoulder, squeezes.

“What the hell even happened here? Where did Loki go?” She is not planning to let those answers disappear behind a sticky curtain of red tape and folders stamped "CLASSIFIED."

"Only one way to find out." There's a challenge in Kate's eye.

"Didn't you hear about the last time I messed with these guys? They stole my iPod." Yeah, so what if it's juvenile? She's still pissed about that.

"We'll just have to try and stay off their radar, then."

"Discreet interference in the investigation of an all-powerful spy agency. Sure, no problem. Do it all the time."

Pepper turns to where Darcy and Kate are loitering. “You getting in?”

Darcy finds that, despite her objections, she’s made up her mind. “We’re going to stay and see what we can see.”

Pepper raises an eyebrow. Darcy sticks her hands into her pants pockets and readies her best ‘I’m a grown up, I do what I want’ arguments, but Pepper just looks at her appraisingly and nods.

She slides a business card out of her pocket and hands it to Darcy. “Call me if you need anything.”

Then they’re gone, leaving Darcy and Kate alone on the sidelines as the firefighters manage to wrangle the fire under control, as cops herd bystanders away to what seems like a totally unnecessary distance.

Finally the S.H.I.E.L.D. vehicles arrive. Agents swarm out all over the crime scene, like little worker ants in their dark uniforms, carrying stuff back to their vans, doing their little dance to tell their bosses where to find the sweetest evidence. No, wait, that's bees. Whatever, they look like insects is what she's getting at here.

Darcy's careful to hold her phone low when she snaps pictures of the hive. She’s trying to blend in with the crowd, but has to push to the front for a better shot, and she knows it’s only a matter of time before someone spots her. They might even know who she is; she’s sure her face is in a few files somewhere.

Agents are zipping five corpses into body bags, and she tries to get a shot before they're all the way concealed, of the paper-white hand she sees grazing the ground as they turn over one of the bodies. It's beyond any kind of natural pallor for a human. She tries to get a look at the head, but the ants are too quick in stashing it away.

She manages to send the pictures to herself in email and delete them from her phone right before a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent takes them into custody.

After Kate is whisked off in a limousine with a scowl on her face and the driver mumbling something about her father losing his mind, they take Darcy to the helicarrier with the threat of a "debrief" at some undisclosed point in the future, and they’re obviously determined to make her sweat it out because they assign her quarters and a change of clothes—S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue sweatpants and a plain black tee. They even let her have her phone back.

“Wow, do I get these in exchange for my constitutional rights?” she says to the agent who hands them to her.

She does take a shower; she’s sweaty, her hair stinks of gasoline and smoke, and somehow there’s blood on her shirt. Then, she crashes hard, and sleeps face-down on her S.H.I.E.L.D.-regulation bed for 9 ½ hours—about 3 hours more than she usually gets.

It’s not yet 5 a.m. when she crawls out of her quarters, but apparently the helicarrier is one of those places like airports, or Vegas, where time of day doesn’t mean a whole lot. People are up and walking the hallways, mostly too busy or too professional to pay her any mind, and she quickly figures out that she doesn’t need babysitters because all the interesting areas require pass-cards to access.

Her stomach makes an ugly growl, and she realizes she hasn’t eaten since before heading to Clint’s place yesterday.

“Lost?” comes a clipped voice from behind her.

The agent is about Darcy’s age and height, her hair in a shoulder-length feathered bob. In spite of her brusque tone, she has a half-smile on her face, the friendliest thing Darcy’s seen since S.H.I.E.L.D. grabbed her.

“Where can a girl get something to eat around here? I mean, assuming civilians get fed.”

Friendly Agent lets out a little snort, then points down the hallway. “Third left, first right, second door on your right.”

“Thanks, Agent—” Darcy glances down at the pass card clipped to her savior’s belt—“Chang.”

"My pleasure, Agent Visitor," says Chang, with a knowing nod at the visitor badge on Darcy’s chest.

When she gets to the mess, Natasha's back from some mystery op, chewing her food with systematic determination, like she's not even tasting it (which is probably for the best, going by how gray the mac and cheese looks). Darcy hovers there with a tray in her hand, looking around at clusters of agents she doesn’t know, and tries to ignore the flashbacks to her high school cafeteria. Natasha catches her eye and gives an almost imperceptible nod to the chair opposite her, still shoveling food like she doesn’t know when her next meal will be.

Around the time she’s finishing up her entree, a shadow looms over the table and Captain America drops into the chair next to Darcy. (If only her high school self could see her now!) His face is grim and washed out, but he puts on an approximation of a playful smile, and leans over to swipe Natasha’s bowl of jello. Natasha rolls her eyes and lets him, and if she didn’t suspect Natasha of being a robot, Darcy might think that was a fond expression on her face.

“How’s he doing?” Natasha asks.

“They’re keeping him sedated for a couple of days to let the burns heal.”

“It’s probably as much sleep as he’s had all year.”

“He should be dead,” says Cap, his lips pinched.

“I thought the burns were only second-degree.”

“The throat injury. A wound that size, normally he would’ve bled out. His healed before that could happen.”

Natasha fixes him with a shrewd, intense look. Darcy’s glad not to be on the receiving end of that look, but Cap just gives a tired one-shouldered shrug and spoons jello into his mouth.

“What, are we thinking healing factor?”

Cap shakes his head. “Wouldn’t that have fixed his burns as well? We’ll just have to see if they can pull something from the security footage.”

“So, did you come all the way here to steal my dessert?”

“Actually I came for a sitrep.”

"Fury says most everything got wiped out in the explosion. They're having a hard time pulling any useful evidence."

Darcy splutters, and the other two turn to stare at her.

She coughs a bit more for cover, takes a long swig of water. “Don’t try and inhale food. That’s a tip from me to you.” She waves a hand. “Don’t mind me. Go on!”

Natasha does, but there’s not much more to tell, and a knot sinks into Darcy’s stomach. Darcy herself saw tons of useful evidence: several almost entirely unburned and totally identifiable corpses, not to mention the cartloads of weapons and equipment the agents were schlepping out of the hostiles' SUVs. She pushes away the rest of her inedible dinner.

Maybe the evidence never got to S.H.I.E.L.D., which would mean that the agents on the ground were moles or frauds.

Maybe Fury got the evidence and kept it from Natasha, which might mean he’s involved, or it might mean that he’s playing his own game, who the hell even knows. It’s like ‘inscrutable’ is his middle name: Nicholas Cannot-Be-Scruted Fury.

Or maybe Natasha’s lying to Captain America’s face, which would mean that S.H.I.E.L.D. is involved in what happened to Tony. Sure, Tony was collateral damage in an attempt to grab Loki, but damn, that's cold. Even if they don't like the guy (and she has it on good authority that they don't like the guy), surely they at least find him useful.

S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t find Darcy in the least bit useful, which is the least comforting thought she’s had in a day of spy games and murder attempts and possible aliens and being detained without charge by a shadowy agency.

Natasha and Cap get up and nod their goodbyes, but Darcy stays in the mess for a while, thinking.

Who can she talk to about this? Not Natasha or Clint, in case S.H.I.E.L.D. is in on it. Not Thor, because she still hasn't figured out the weird memory-lapse thing, and Jane would want to tell Thor. Tony's barely regained consciousness, Pepper's got enough on her mind. Bruce she's spoken to, like, once ever; and Steve... well, much as she'd love to go racing to Captain America and beg his very manly and well-defined help, from what she knows of him, it's hard to imagine him keeping secrets from the rest of the team. She's on her own.

A brash laugh breaks in on her thoughts, and she looks up to see a group of four agents stride into the mess, laughing and giving each other shit while they grab their food. Great. At least someone's having fun. Two of them, a man and a woman, look familiar. Maybe they were on the New Mexico op that cost her that iPod.

No, that's not it. But she's seen them before, that's for sure. Not like this, casual and joking, but serious, and efficient, with sunglasses and gloves. Gloves that were unseasonal for the weather. She uses that detail to tease out the full memory. Black gloves handling the zipper of a large black plastic bag... Black gloves slamming the door of a humvee, the man wearing them glancing over his shoulder, like he was doing it nervously, involuntarily.

Shit! She pulls out her phone casually and downloads the gas station photos from her email. Nothing to see here, just a student checking Facebook. And... bingo. Hair slicked back a bit, black suit instead of dark blue uniform, but definitely the same guy.

One of the others slaps him on the shoulder and calls him Williams.

A shadow looms over her and she clicks off the phone hurriedly.

"Oh, hi, Agent Phil." Shit. Did he see?

"Time for your debrief, Ms. Lewis."

"Crap! I mean, sure. Yes. Right away, uh, sir." She fumbles her phone, but fortunately not her crappy mess-hall coffee, and scrambles to her feet.

His mouth quirks, which is like Agent Phil's equivalent of Thor's belly-laugh. "Follow me, please."

She follows him down nondescript gray hallway after nondescript gray hallway, her anxiety mounting. Nobody makes eye contact with her; they just give Agent Phil those brisk military nod-greetings, which he returns. Everyone seems like they grew up doing that. Maybe they used to nod to their parents that way when they left for school. Greeted their dates that way?

 _Pull yourself together, Lewis_ , she thinks.

She's about to be faced with the scariest one-eyed boss-man the universe has to offer. Or maybe second scariest, judging by some stuff she's heard Thor say. Whatever. She's got to be ready to answer his questions, with Agent Phil looming over her full of accusations of spying.

When Agent Phil leads her into a room, it takes her a few seconds to register that this doesn't seem like the grand kind of office a Director would have. But this a military op. (It is military, right?) They have that spartan chic thing going on.

Oh, wait, Agent Phil's sitting down behind the desk, gesturing her to the other chair, and he's getting out a folder. Which he opens and spreads out between them, facing toward him. And it's her face staring out from the top corner. Where did they get her passport photo? Is this whole file on her? Why would they have... but they probably have a file on everyone, right?

Agent Phil's looking at her expectantly.

"I'm sorry, what was the question?"

His carefully bland expression tightens a little, like if he didn't have an audience he'd be rubbing his temples to stave off a headache.

"I said, Ms. Lewis, how would you feel about becoming an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.?"

## Tony

_He tries to move but his limbs are frozen in place, his head lolling against the back of the sofa. Footsteps circle slowly behind him, and then suddenly a puff of breath gusts hot against his cheek._

_“I think it was fate that you survived,” purrs the familiar voice in his ear, and then a hand is on his shoulder, siding down over his chest, almost a caress. Long fingers circle the arc reactor, teasing. From the corner of his eye, he sees the fall of black hair, the angular features._

_Something about that isn’t right. This isn’t how it goes._

_He struggles but no sound comes._

_“Shhh,” soothes the voice, and he almost believes it isn’t mocking him. “You have one last gift to give me.”_

_Lips brush softly just beneath his ear as, with a soft click, the arc reactor comes free._

_“’Proof that Tony Stark has a heart,’” the voice quotes, and there’s a note of regret. “Your heart is mine now.”_

_Shards of agony worm their way into his chest. He wants to gasp, he wants to scream, but—nothing._

_Fingers card gently through his hair. “Just go to sleep. It won’t be long…”_

Everything swims, and he hears the muffled sound of voices. _Pepper_ , he thinks. She's talking to someone who speaks in clipped tones about ‘prognosis’ and ‘recovery’, and she sounds heartbreakingly lost. He wants to reach out and soothe away whatever's troubling her, but slides back into the dark.

***

The third time he floats to consciousness, he decides to stay. It's still bright, and loud, and hard, but he thinks maybe he can deal with it this time.

What woke him was Pepper squeezing Bruce's shoulder, and asking of the scientist when he glances up from his book, "How's he doing?"

"Never better, Pep," says Tony, but it comes out as a wordless, confused groan.

"Oh my god, you're awake!" She's at his bedside in a heartbeat, reaching out to take his hand, but stopping herself.

He glances down and sees why: his whole right hand in a bundle of gauze. He tries to make a crack about mummies, but Pepper soothes his forehead. "Shh, don't try and talk."

Bruce is cleaning his glasses and giving him that self-deprecating smile and the look of relief is so heartfelt that Tony wants to grab them both and shake them.

"You're my Florence Nightingale," he says to Bruce, or he would if his throat weren't so parched. And sore. Why is it sore?

"Tony," says Pepper, and she's got that heartbroken look she gets when she’s either about to start crying or tear him a new one—or both. “You’ve been out for two days and there was extensive damage to your larynx, so please. For once in your life. Be quiet.”

It’s several more days before they let him get up. Most of it he spends in a drugged doze, which is probably good otherwise he’d be going nuts by now. The second-degree burns all down the right side of his body have been repaired with skin grafts, but the constant throb of them takes up at least 20% of his brain capacity at all times. He spends some time brainstorming ideas for artificial skin, but he’s too fuzzy-headed, so he has Jarvis put a pin in that.

When he’s not stuck in his own head, he’s putting himself through the torture of physical therapy, and speech therapy, and hearing over, and over, and over about how lucky he is not to be dead.

It’s almost a welcome change, a couple of weeks after the incident, when Jarvis interrupts him while he’s flicking left-handed through various project files, trying to find something he can stand to work on.

“Sir, you have a guest.”

“Yeah? Did they bring flowers?”

“No, sir. Indeed, Director Fury says, and I quote, ‘If Stark doesn’t get his ass out here in the next five minutes I’m billing him for the gas station and half of Zanesville, Ohio.’”

Tony sighs, but gets to his feet and heads to the conference room where Fury is waiting. Natasha leans in a corner, arms folded across her chest, face carefully blank, watching Tony for every stray microexpression. 

Between the pain and the drugs, he can barely hold it together to stay upright in his chair. He hopes it comes across as more "insouciant slouch" and less "barely crawled away from death's door."

"What can I do you for, Director? Oh, and thanks for the fruit basket, by the way—nice touch." He knows it was Coulson who arranged the basket, but it's worth it to see the slight twitch in Fury's eye.

"You know damn well what I want, Stark. You've just spent five days harboring a fugitive criminal, helping him to evade S.H.I.E.L.D. I might add, and you want to know what I want? I want you to give me a reason for your actions that does not require me to throw your ass off the helicarrier without your damn suit, because you bet I'm not going through the paperwork to take you off our books."

"You can give it to Agent. He likes paperwork."

"I suppose you're gonna tell me you were coerced."

"No."

There's a pause, in which, presumably, Fury is waiting for more sarcasm, but Tony just stares him down.

"That's it? No?"

"No. Nein. Nyet. Etc." Tony crosses one leg over the other at the ankle, but has to back out of that when his raw skin protests. "You've talked to Thor and Bruce, so I know you know the story. I'm not going to waste both our time bullshitting you."

"Well, that'd be a first. So what excuse are you going to give me for fraternizing with the alien war criminal who destroyed half of the island of Manhattan?"

"Fraternizing makes it sound like way more fun than it actually was."

"He saved your life, Stark."

"He sealed up the wound to stop me from bleeding out. Didn't exactly send me back good as new. Anyway, I saved his life, he saved mine. Probably some Norse god honor thing."

"Yes. You saved his life first. Why?"

"Thor asked me to look after him." Fury opens his mouth to interrupt, but Tony cuts him off. "I know, I know, mom. If my friends asked me to jump off a cliff, would I? Well, yeah, actually, but that's kinda beside the point. Look, Thor's my buddy, and he's saved our planet on multiple occasions while never asking for anything more than his weight in pop tarts every day. So when he asks me to babysit his little brother, who by the way is a prince of the only aliens who are currently on our side, you're damn right I'm gonna do it."

"And your reason for keeping S.H.I.E.L.D. in the dark on this?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe something to do with the little fact that a bunch of people in S.H.I.E.L.D. uniforms, you know, tried to kill us. I didn't really figure you sent them after me, but I wasn't going to take that chance. Turns out I was right to be worried, because, oh, hey, didn't you guys have a mole?"

"How do you know ab—you know what, never mind."

Tony didn't know, but now he does. He tries to keep that smirk off his face.

"What is Loki planning next?"

"Oh, I don't know. Couple weeks in Cancun? Movie marathon? He wasn't exactly chatty."

Fury's glower gets more intense, if that's possible. "He must have an angle. Whatever his next plan is, we know he'll try and involve you somehow. We're watching you, Stark." He doesn't even bother to try and make it sound like it's for Tony's own good.

He knows he should be reporting everything Loki said, every hint of a weakness, everything that could give them a tactical advantage. Instead, he locks that stuff away, because, for some reason, making a report to S.H.I.E.L.D. about what he's deduced of Loki's past, of his fears, would feel like—of all things—a betrayal.

S.H.I.E.L.D. says there was no security footage from the gas station, but he finds it on the secure server and downloads it.

The 'incident' lasts barely two and a half minutes. The juvenile male, Subject L, is dragged from the rear seat of the vehicle. The adult male in the front passenger seat, Subject T, exits the vehicle and proceeds to engage the hostiles in hand-to-hand combat, but is quickly overwhelmed. At this point, four additional hostiles exit a second vehicle and engage the first group of hostiles in a firefight _._ Non-standard ordnance is deployed. (That's S.H.I.E.L.D.-speak for freaky sci-fi energy blasts.)

One of the hostiles engaging Subject T attempts to sever the subject's carotid artery, and that's when shit gets weird.

See, up to this point, Loki's been thrashing and writhing in much the way of a helpless teenage boy getting carted off by professional killers. In fact, the very few blows he is able to land seem designed more to piss off his attackers than to cause any real damage. But when Tony goes down, he throws off three adults like they're kittens clinging to his clothes. He seems to be snarling something, but there's no sound on the feed, and from this angle there's no chance of lip-reading.

Tony has to slow the footage down for this next bit.

A stray energy bolt flies in from out of frame, and before it makes contact with the gas pump Loki’s already in the air. He plows into Tony, who hasn’t even finished slumping to the pavement, before the fireball erupts. They roll together for a few turns, ending with Tony on his back, Loki kneeling over him with a hand a few inches from his throat. The camera isn't sensitive enough to pick up whatever mojo Loki's pulling, so it just shows up as a glow that blurs the image all around the two on the ground.

Then he's up, prowling toward the fray with his armor gathering itself around him. By the time he reaches the first enemy he's in full world-domination regalia. This is the only bit Tony has a clear memory of, the bit where Loki is flinging hostiles around like puppets. Then, he stalks _into the fireball_ , and never comes out the other side.

The Hulk explodes out of the gas station, seems pissed when he realizes the fight is over without him, punches the one remaining enemy out of his way, and then proceeds to sit on the ground where he cradles Tony's head in his lap with a touching gentleness. The flames continue to lick at the gas pumps, spreading toward the camera, until finally the footage cuts out with a burst of digital noise.

"He saved your life, Tony," says Bruce behind him.

Tony wonders how long he's been there, how many times he's watched Tony reverse and replay the footage.

Bruce is holding two glasses. He pulls a flask from his inside jacket pocket and pours them each a measure.

"Don't make me regret this," he says with a wink.

"Ahh, Bruce, buddy. You're my—"

"Favorite. Yeah. Got it."

They sip in silence for a few moments. Tony knows Bruce is only sipping for show, won't come close to finishing, but appreciates the effort to keep him company.

"Loki saved your life," Bruce repeats. "Why do you think that is?"

"He owed me one. We talked about it after he came round from the surgery."

Lying with the truth is something he's always been good at, even before meeting the god of lies. Because Tony's very aware right now that, a. while they did indeed talk about it, Loki was very much not in agreement about any debt being owed, and b. the more pertinent question is, why did Loki flip out when the goons threatened Tony's life, while mere seconds before he seemed to want to goad them into taking his own?


	7. Scheming on a Thing

## Darcy

"Are you completely nuts?"

Darcy looks around at the other café patrons and leans over the table, close enough that Kate can hear her mutter, "Well, yeah, but how's about not letting the whole of New York hear about my psychological issues?"

Kate sighs and wraps her hands around the steaming mug, paying way more attention to the watery mocha than it deserves. "What happened to them being the enemy? Two days ago we thought they were going to murder us so dead that nobody would ever find our corpses."

"I still think they'll do that, if they find out."

"Find out what?" Kate's sharp scrutiny makes Darcy suddenly understand why she's qualified to go by the codename Hawkeye. "Oh my god. You haven't given up at all! You are totally a double-agent!"

"They handed me an opportunity on a plate. What am I going to do, slap it out of their hands?"

_"We've been observing you for some time now," said Agent Phil, leafing through the pages in her file._

_Of course they had._ Just how much have they observed? _she wondered._

_"It's S.H.I.E.L.D. policy to do a thorough background check on anyone who comes into contact with our operations, in order to determine how they should be handled."_

_His brisk professional tone didn't change, but a chill went through her at that 'handled'. It could mean so many things, most of them unpleasant._

_"A small but promising minority find themselves here. Now—"_ _He pulled up a small case from behind his desk and popped it open, turned it around so she can see her collection of improvised evidence bags. "Pepper Potts tells me it was thanks to your intervention that she was on the scene before we were."_

_"I guess so."_

_"Your thoroughness does you credit," he said, sifting through them and examining their contents. "And it seems you're going to try and involve yourself in Avengers business whether or not you're invited to. S.H.I.E.L.D. would rather have that persistence on its side, Ms. Lewis."_

Kate laughs, bright and vicious. She's still leaning forward over the table, her voice pitched low enough to keep it between the two of them, despite her clear excitement. "No, this is awesome. Don't get me wrong, I still think you're crazy."

"I can live with crazy-awesome."

"But seriously, ask Clint. Ask anyone who's met me. I am the last person to talk you out of a ridiculous superhero plan."

"I'm not a superhero."

Kate snorts, but doesn't argue. "You should try it sometime. It's amazing."

_"What makes you think I'm cut out to be an agent?" She was totally not agent material. She misplaced stuff in the lab all the time, didn’t get out of bed before noon unless she had to, and hadn't seen the inside of a gym since high school. All those agents were seriously buff. Even Agent Phil had some muscles hidden under his suit and mild demeanor; she'd seen him take down a fleeing minion with a well-aimed shoe._

_"S.H.I.E.L.D. has nothing to lose by putting you through the basic assessment," said Agent Phil, cutting into her thoughts. She noted that he'd said nothing about what she might have to lose._

_So this was it, then. She at least had to undergo the assessment, or they'd find some other way to 'handle' her._

"There's so much we can do with this! I'll have someone on the inside!"

Hey, wait, this was totally Darcy's plan! She puts up a show of indignation. " _You'll_ have someone?"

"Yeah, it'll be like I'm your handler."

"I think they assign me a handler. Why do I need another one?"

"I can snoop around outside, we can compare notes." She takes a long sip of her mocha. "We'll have to be extra careful, though. They'll probably be keeping an even closer eye on you now."

Darcy quits teasing and lets herself grin at her co-conspirator. "As if I'd ditch you now, anyway."

"We make an awesome team."

"Hell yeah, we do!"

## Tony

There's never been what most people would call normality in Tony Stark's life; each time things get shaken up, they settle into some new configuration of batshit insane. After the Loki Incident, he's pretty sure he manages to give a good impression of falling back into the pre-Incident routine, but he knows better. Just the fact that this has usurped the title of "Loki Incident" in his mind, eclipsing that one time he had to fly a nuke through an extradimensional portal in order to prevent Loki from conquering the Earth, is proof enough of that.

So, it's late nights in the lab with Bruce; movie marathons and crime-fighting with the team; confrontational debriefings with Fury; banter with Pepper where he tries to pretend his heart isn't still being ripped out in slow motion. You know, normal.

In the few moments he gets to himself, he works on his secret project, which is figuring out how extensive S.H.I.E.L.D.'s security breach was, and exactly how many factions were competing that day to beat him up and take his toys. But even this is playing at normality, following a script. He devotes copious processing power (both his and Jarvis's) to the project, and when he's finally got a breakthrough Fury swoops in and demands answers. He plasters on a cheesy grin ( _busted!_ ), and hands over his results. It hasn't even produced anything satisfying, as of yet. He traces a terminal on the helicarrier that someone used to monitor Bruce's aliases, but the agent assigned to that station hadn't been seen for a couple of days by then. They later figure out that her clearance code was used to override one of the carrier's exterior doors. While it was 40,000 feet up. She may or may not have had a parachute.

Nearly two months have passed since the Incident, and they get back to the tower at 2:30 am after an op, a little banged up but still wired from the fight and flooded with relief that everyone made it out in one piece. Of course, nobody's actually gonna say that, so instead Clint's pulling a six-pack out of the fridge, and Tony's picking out a movie that they haven't shown Steve yet, and Natasha's telling Tony exactly how he needs to work on his moves...

Bruce, in his tiny bubble of calm, is the one who hears the thunder first, his head whipping around to look out of the window, but the first flash of lightning has them all rushing out onto the roof.

Thor lands majestically, of course. He might be a giant goofball, but he's a majestic goofball. Don't ask Tony how that's possible.

"Thor, buddy! Long time no see!" Tony would give him a manly clap on the back, but dude's like ten feet tall, so he settles for the upper arm.

Clint just hands him a beer like he was never gone, and leads the way back inside.

"We missed you at tonight's battle," says Steve with a smile.

"Nah, he'd'a just got in the way," winks Clint.

"I am certain that you acquitted yourselves adequately without me, my friends."

"Adequately? You get a load of this guy?" Something bounces off Thor's temple with more velocity than a kernel of popcorn should by rights be able to achieve, leaving a greasy smear in its wake.

If anyone else notices that Thor's evading the unspoken question of where he's been and what he's been up to, they don't let on, just brag about their near-death escapes and their crazy moves, while the movie whirs on in the background.

Tony's restless and fidgety, so he sneaks out before the end credits roll, making a gesture toward the bathroom in response to Steve's questioning look. The others, except Thor, have already fallen asleep, and Tony hopes that they'll just let Jarvis play the movie's sequel so he can be left alone.

He sits at a workbench adjusting the alignment of one of the gauntlets, but for once his heart isn't in it.

"Jarvis?"

"Sir?"

"Open a project file."

"Any particular one, sir?"

"No. Yes. Ah, what the hell. Open Project Reindeer Games."

The display is already flashing up around him before he's finished the sentence, text and images cascading. The information hasn't gotten any less vague and frustrating since last time he checked, though.

"If you knew which project I wanted, Jarvis, why bother asking?"

"Sir, over the course of the past nine weeks, this project has been accessed more than any other single file on my server. 12% more frequently than the design for the Mark XII armor; 23% more than your efforts to find the S.H.I.E.L.D. mole; 64% more than the briefings for all Avengers missions combined. Should I continue?"

"No, no, I get the picture."

He swipes information around listlessly. The amount of actual info in here is pitiful, though perhaps that’s not surprising given that when Loki disappears, he really _disappears_. Aside from the meager intel S.H.I.E.L.D. picked up during the battle of New York, most of what he’s got in here consists of contradictory stories and factoids from myth. After all Loki’s vague hints about destiny, he was more than a little curious about what had gotten the god so tied in knots. Apparently, he’s fated to bring the end of the world—who knew? Yeah, Tony can see how that might weigh on you a bit. But aside from doomy prophecies, there wasn’t much useful information in there (though the story about the horse was kind of eye-opening).

He’s also diligently noted all the half-remembered conversations he had with Thor in the aftermath of New York, during which he spent most of the time attempting to steer a blearily drunk thunder god around a whole load of conversational minefields, and Thor spent most of the time wondering when things went so very wrong, and whether Loki had ever been the brother he believed him to be. The most useful thing that came out of that was the information that Loki is actually a different species, a Jotun—whatever that is—and considered a monster by most of Asgard. That has to sting, Tony thinks.

So yeah, the guy is pretty fucked up, and with good reason, and all of this charade of intel-gathering is completely failing to take Tony’s mind off the fact that he’d had the chance to make a connection with Loki, and he blew it. Every time he remembers pushing her off his lap in the motel parking lot, his gut twists with pangs of regret.

He wonders if he’ll ever get another chance. To do his duty as one of Earth’s mightiest heroes, that is. By winning over a former villain. Yep.

He’s sitting with these uncomfortable thoughts when his peace and quiet is interrupted again.

"Sir—"

"What? What is it now?"

Jarvis doesn't have the chance to respond before the workshop door opens behind him and he hears Thor's voice say his name. A flick of his hand and the project file disappears.

"Jarvis? How did he get in here?"

"You gave him access codes, sir."

"Why would I do that? Revoke them. You—" he points to Thor. "Out. Now. I'm busy." He turns back to his gauntlet and pokes at it with a random implement.

"I have come to apologize, Tony Stark."

"For what?"

"I feel responsible for the injuries you received. Had it not been for my foolishness in allowing myself to be lured away, you would never have been in such danger."

"Oh, that. I've bounced back from worse."

"I do not doubt it. However, it grieves me that I could not be here to aid in your recovery."

"Don't sweat it, Point Break. It gave me a chance to catch up on the soaps. Did you know that Terri is cheating on Brad?"

"Still. I am in your debt."

There's a long pause, during which Tony tries to keep the tension out of his shoulders and tinker with the gauntlet like he's really fixing it.

"You keep a file regarding my brother."

"Hi, yeah, have we met? I'm Tony Stark, and I have a file on everyone. Tossing me out of a window puts you pretty much at the top of the intel-required list. If you don't get out of my workshop, I'll send a copy of yours to Jane, including the photos from when you fell asleep on the couch and Clint drew on your face in Sharpie."

Thor busts out with a loud, honest laugh, and Tony sighs and turns around. Obviously he's not going to be able to get out of this without a Conversation. He looks at the thing in his hand and wonders if Thor could tell that he wasn't exactly going to be able to fine-tune his advanced robotics with a laser pointer. Why does he even have a laser pointer down here? He sets it on the bench hastily.

"Fine. You want to talk about this, let's talk. You took off back to Asgard right after Loki disappeared, and you've been AWOL ever since. What happened, did mom ground you or something?"

"I have been attempting to locate my brother. It is proving most difficult. Perhaps we could share our efforts."

"I don't have much to share. I just figured his whole thing was a ruse. He conveniently let you bust him out of alien jail, then he ditched us as soon as he could get away."

"Nay. That is the most curious thing. Could he not have escaped from you and Dr. Banner on an earlier occasion?"

"Well, I guess. We weren't exactly handcuffing him to the radiator. And if he coulda done that teleportation thing at any point... Which reminds me—you said he'd run out of juice."

"It seems I was mistaken."

"No shit, Sherlock."

"When I recovered him from his captivity, he was drained, weak. He used no magic, made no attempt to flee, so I concluded that he was incapable of it. If he merely wished, as you say, to escape at the earliest opportunity, he could have done so at any time."

"Not after he was injured in the attack."

"Yes, the attack. A most curious injury, for an Aes—for a Jotun to be threatened by a bullet from a mortal weapon. And yet, when your life was in danger, he was suddenly able to summon the magic to staunch the flow of your blood."

"Huh." Tony tries not to draw the obvious conclusion: that Loki values Tony’s life more than his own.

"He has developed a fondness for you, friend Stark."

Tony squirms under the scrutiny. "Can't we just say 'huh,' and leave it at that?"

"Perhaps he is not beyond hope, after all."

"Look, I'm really not comfortable with this madman-with-a-crush train of thought, no offense. I'm starting to think Fury's right, and he's working some angle. Never tell Fury I said that, by the way."

"Madman with a what?"

Oops. “I’m just saying,” he waves a hand vaguely in the air, “even when he was co-operating he seemed like was squelching the urge to crush me like the mortal bug I am. Let's assume he has a plan, and now he's gone off the radar. I've cracked everything S.H.I.E.L.D. has on him, but they lost track of him weeks ago. Should we be worried?"

“My brother has good cause to remain hidden.”

"True. There were at least two groups fighting it out at the gas station for the honor of inviting him to prom. Then there was that mole at S.H.I.E.L.D., and I haven’t managed to track down who she was working for."

"Somebody also impersonated a messenger of Asgard, to make sure I was absent when they attacked. The real messenger was discovered dead some days later. Whoever these people are, their reach is long and their power great."

"So, what, you're worried about him? Hate to break it to ya, but when Loki's on the loose, it's not him you should be worried for."

"He is my brother, Tony Stark."

Tony sighs. "Yeah. I get that. Look, I got nothing right now. You got nothing. Let's just agree to share intel when we get it, okay?"

"Very well."

## Darcy

Darcy steps off the S.H.I.E.L.D. quinjet onto the blacktop carrying a S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue gym bag, and the quinjet pilot barely waits for her to disembark before he fires up the engine again.

“Thanks, Mr., um, Pilot!” Darcy calls over her shoulder at the outside of the quinjet, and looks around.

What looks like a tiny cluster of gray buildings huddles across the tarmac, the only sign of civilization on the flat beige expanse. On the horizon, irregular beige hills surround them on all sides. She thinks maybe they’re in Washington State somewhere, but geography was never her strong suit.

A small figure is moving toward her, silhouetted against the buildings, so Darcy figures she may as well set out in that direction.

“Hello, Agent Visitor,” says the figure when she gets close enough, and holds out a hand to shake. She’s wearing a S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform and she has amazing posture—must do Pilates or something.

“Not really an agent,” says Darcy absently, trying to figure out where she’s seen this person before. “I’m just here for a basic assessment.”

“Is that what they told you?” the agent asks, sliding a key card through the lock at the exterior door and pressing a thumb to the scanner. She smiles at Darcy. “If they sent you here, they’re pretty sure they want you. It’s mostly to assess what they’re going to do with you.”

“Wow, that doesn’t sound ominous at all.”

They wind their way down gray hallway after gray hallway, passing agents here and there. Even the ones who spare them a nod rush by like they’re on the way to save the world. Which, hey, maybe they are.

“Don’t look at me for reassurance,” says the agent in an amused tone. “I’m only here because I’m the most junior agent on base and they wanted a gopher to get you. Seems like I’m always giving you directions.”

“Oh, hey, I _do_ know you! Agent, uh, Chang, right?”

Chang looks at her, a surprised smile pulling at her lips. “Good memory.” She comes to a stop in front of one of the anonymous gray doors. “Anyway, this is you. Your schedule’s on the desk. Find me in the mess later if you want to.”

The door clangs shut, leaving Darcy alone to drop her bag on the thin gray carpet and take a look around. It’s an interior room, so no window. There’s a desk, a chair, a footlocker, and a twin bed, which when she sits down she finds has a softer mattress than she would have credited. Everything’s monochrome, neat and clean but Spartan.

She unpacks her few things into the footlocker, which consist mainly of her S.H.I.E.L.D. regulation clothes. They took her cell phone, her wallet, and the iPod she bought to replace the last iPod they took. She’ll apparently get them back when she’s through, but she’ll believe that when she sees it. She’s not much of a reader, but seeing as she’s being internet-starved here she grabbed the latest Laurell K. Hamilton so she wouldn’t go completely nuts.

According to the schedule sheet, she’s got thirty minutes before her first exercise, so she pulls out a composition book and a pen. She’s promised herself she’ll make notes about her stay; nothing that will incriminate her when they read it—and she knows they will read it—just an account of the tests she takes, the people she meets. She pretends she's reporting to Kate, like she would a real handler.

_Monday 3/23. Arrived on base. No idea how long assessment will take. Nobody except Jane even knows I’m here. Told mom_ _I’m going with Jane to use a radio telescope in South America and will be off the grid for a few weeks. I get phone privileges once a week here, so I said I’d call her on the satellite phone on Sunday. Agent Phil seemed happy with that, like I’d passed some kind of test._

'Basic assessment' makes boot camp look like a slumber party, or at least Darcy imagines it does. Not like she's been to boot camp, after all. She wears nothing but S.H.I.E.L.D. regulation clothes, eats nothing but S.H.I.E.L.D. regulation food, sleeps when they tell her, sees nothing outside those gray walls except when she gets to join the real agents for training exercises in the thousands of barren acres surrounding the base.

Most of the time though, it's just her, getting drilled by some long-suffering or pissed-off agent. Even when she does well, they act like she’s wasting their time; she wishes she could tell how much of that is an act.

She does pretty well overall on the aptitude tests. Not so much on the quizzes—current affairs, history, that kind of thing—but logic, and memory, and observation she aces.  She has some high school French and decent Spanish. Then there’s the weird shit like getting a crash course in, say, a Japanese tea ceremony or some such, and having to fake her way through like she knows what she’s doing.

“You’re a natural,” says the agent in charge of Japanese tea ceremonies, dropping her S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue poker face for long enough to look impressed.

Her fitness scores are pretty much where she thought they'd be. Agent Wei, who’s putting her through her paces, purses his lips in disapproval. Still, they assign her to a training class, so she figures it must not be hopeless.

Marksmanship is a surprise success; the first time they take her to the range, she puts a creditable cluster of holes in a paper target. She's done this with an air rifle, years back when her dad was still around, but nothing that had a real recoil. It's strangely calming, when she gets in the zone, gets her breathing right, with the rest of the world outside the muffled barrier of her ear protection. She's no Clint, or Kate, but she can do the two shots to the center of mass thing, no problem. On the range. She tries not to think about having to do that to a living target.

She talks to as many people as she can, trying to get a feel for these agents and their attitudes. Small-talk, mostly, nothing that gives too much of her away. With the less uptight ones, she plays up the inappropriate bigmouth attitude a little to get them to loosen up. She thinks maybe one time she sees an agent she recognizes—Williams' friend, the female agent who helped disappear the evidence—but she's gone before Darcy can see where she goes, or even be sure it was her. Mostly, she just tries to fit in and be a good little agent-wannabe.

_Saturday 3/28. Agent Chang has taken me under her wing, or taken pity on me, one or the other. She says it’s because I look like a lost puppy in the rain, but I think she actually likes me. She even introduced me to some of her friends over lunch. Looks like I'll be doing some training exercises with them._

Darcy hates to keep reminding herself that they aren't real friends, that Chang is a member of the sinister spy organization that almost killed Tony, that she is here to infiltrate. She surprises herself with how good she's getting at walking the tightrope of being real enough that Chang and her friends welcome her into the group, but keeping back all the important bits, the bits that would get her thrown into a S.H.I.E.L.D. detainment cell for the rest of her (probably short) existence. It's kinda funny to think about how the agency are right this minute training her to be better at deceiving them.

_Monday 4/13. 30 minutes on the elliptical, the longest yet. Agent Wei looked less disappointed in me than usual._

She amazes herself by her diligence with the journal, given her total lack of success with the diary she bought as a kid. This is for the mission, not because she misses Kate, and definitely not because she's lonely and would totally let S.H.I.E.L.D. keep that iPod if only she could have one real conversation.

_Thursday 4/16. They really put me through my paces today. The base was extra busy, too. I think someone important arrived, but it's pretty hush-hush._

Friday morning, she walks into the gym for her scheduled 7 am workout (just imagine telling the Darcy of a month ago that she'd be going to 7 am workouts every day!), but Wei isn't there. Instead, she's faced with a familiar balding head atop a familiar black suit and tie.

"Oh, hi, Agent Ph—uh, Coulson." She's suddenly feeling way underdressed in her S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue shorts and tank top. She stifles the impulse to ask if she's in trouble. For once, he doesn't look like he's fighting the mother of all migraines; maybe because he's not even in the same state as the Avengers.

He steps toward her and pulls his hands out of his pockets, holding out a small flat rectangle of plastic, and giving her a small but genuine smile that creases the corners of his eyes.

"Congratulations, Agent Lewis."

She stares at the ID badge in his hand for a few moments before her brain kicks in and prompts her to take it. "Wow. This is... Wow." It's really official-looking, covered in various anti-counterfeiting holograms and chips and microprinting. The photo is the one they took of her on the day she arrived, the first time she put on her uniform, and doesn't quite make her look like a complete dork. Her rank is listed as 'technician', which she guesses is a polite way of saying 'total newbie'.

Agent Ph—Agent Coulson is talking again.

"—to be stationed in New York City. Given your familiarity with the Avengers, I recommended you for the team. Your training will continue, but I'm assigning you to a junior agent who will mentor you in the field. Pack your bags, agent. Wheels up at oh-nine-hundred."

"Yes, sir!" she manages, her heart hammering in her chest. Underachieving has been a way of life for so long she almost forgot it was a defense mechanism, and it feels so damn good to be worthy of this. She looks up at him, and smiles, and for one moment allows herself to forget that it isn't for real.


	8. Figures From the Past Stand Tall

## Tony

_He can’t remember a time before pain. They’ve taken him apart and put him back together again only to take him apart in a new and terrifying way so many times now that his body is one raw nerve and his mind is one constant scream._

_He’d say anything to make it end, but they never ask any questions. They never speak to him, just of him, around him. He’s a piece of meat on their table._

_They place a scepter in his hands and aim him like a weapon. He hefts it, feels the weight and the balance, the naked surge of power, fills with a resolve never to be at the mercy of another being, never to let himself fall so low._

_Face to face with his captor at last, he thrusts with the point of his spear and sees the life drain out of those green eyes. The man falls in a tangle of pale limbs and dark hair, and his blood rises like a tide…_

Tony gasps awake and jolts upright in bed, scrubbing both hands over his face and struggling to get his racing heartbeat under control.

***

“You look like microwaved shit,” says Clint helpfully.

Tony grunts and flips down his faceplate. “Worked late on a prototype.” He’s not sure it sounds convincing, but he’s exhausted, and unsettled by the dreams, and he just wants to get to the part where he blasts something through a wall with his repulsor.

Someone’s making ice sculptures at a party in a swanky mansion upstate. Not in the way that people pay tens of thousands of dollars for, more like in the way that means javelins of ice thrusting unexpectedly out of the ground and impaling staff and guests. There’s screaming and mayhem and slicks of blood and ice on the marble floor, and Tony finds it strangely satisfying to stomp in there in his Iron Man suit and let the terrified people stream past him while some put-upon S.H.I.E.L.D. agent tries to conduct the chaos.

He only wishes it were happening somewhere he could just let rip and cause some damage.

“I got eyes on it,” says Natasha over the comm.

“In position now,” says Clint. And then, “Holy shit, what is that?”

“You tell me, Hawkeye. What are we dealing with?” That’s Coulson, calm and collected as ever.

“It’s… I don’t even know what I’m looking at. Big. Blue skin, red eyes, covered in some kind of weird markings, shooting ice everywhere. A mutant, or an alien maybe?”

Tony’snever seen one, but he’s read up on the Jotun enough to recognize that description. _Loki_ , he breathes, apparently not quite quiet enough.

“What was that, Iron Man?” –That’s Coulson.

“You’re serious? This thing is Loki?” –Clint.

“How do we take it down?” –Natasha, pragmatic as always.

“Ask Tony, he’s the resident expert.” –Clint again, with a note of bitterness in his voice.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean, Hawkeye?” Tony’s still chasing the sounds of destruction into the mansion. Clint’s been making little digs ever since Tony got back from his little road trip, saying Tony should get checked out for mind control, saying god knows what mojo Loki put on him at the gas station. Tony’s raw enough and exhausted enough that he feels like throwing down about it.

Clint, though, chooses not to dignify him with a response, figures his time is better spent provoking the angry Frost Giant tearing chunks out of the building like it’s a gingerbread house.

“This is a new look,” Tony hears him say. “Got tired of the whole snooty reindeer thing, did you?”

The screams continue as the party guests carry out the world’s least organized evacuation, but otherwise there’s a strange lull. Tony finally makes it to the scene in time to hear Loki sneer, “Ah, the archer. Tell me, little hawk, do you miss the days of having more… direction… in your life?” It’s a brittle taunt, but he manages to inject it with some grim humor.

Yep, he might look like a smurf, but it’s still Loki alright.

Clint smiles tightly. “Yeah? Tell me how that worked out for you.”

Tony’s trying to figure out what the plan is here, because while Clint’s distracted with the goading, Loki’s leaning as if casually on a display case, but Tony can see the frost creeping over it, obscuring the ancient book that rests open inside, and the cracks starting to spread through the glass.

“You realized you can’t outsmart us,” Clint’s saying, “So you thought you’d dress up like a monster and smash some shit.”

_Oh, crap,_ Tony thinks. _He had to go and say the M-word._

Even if the room weren’t already full of ice, Tony would feel the chill. Loki takes a step toward Clint, all humor utterly drained from his face.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” says Tony, taking a few measured steps into the room, but there’s already a massive wave of ice surging up to overwhelm Clint, and of course Tony’s first impulse is to shove the archer out of the way and put himself in its path.

When it crashes down, he starts off knowing that he’s going to be spending hours in the workshop hammering dents out of his armor, and immediately finds himself desperately hoping he’s not also going to be spending hours in surgery having his bones dug out of his internal organs.

He sees Loki’s face bleed from rage into surprise into dismay. Before Tony’s crushed completely to his knees, the flow of ice stops abruptly. He sees the display case finally crack, the blue hand grabbing the book from inside, and the shimmer of a god of mischief teleporting the fuck out of there.

“What got into him?” Clint asks as they chip Tony out of the ice.

## Darcy

“First mission?” says Chang, dropping into the quinjet seat next to Darcy.

“First mission.” Darcy’s preoccupied with her weapons check: sidearm loaded, safety on; night-night pistol prepped and ready; boot knife (she has a boot knife!) securely situated but ready to slide free if necessary.

Chang nods. “You’ll be good. I saw your scores.”

“It’s not the same,” Darcy replies, checking her sidearm just one more time.

Chang reaches over and stills Darcy’s hand with one of her own. “You’ll be good,” she says again.

“Hey Lewis,” comes another voice from the ramp. “First mission?” It’s Darren Williams, the agent she's been trying to investigate for the gas station coverup. He’s followed by the last member of the team: Agent Gomez, a nondescript ex-military guy who grunts more than he talks.

Darcy sighs. “Hey, Williams. Yeah, first mission.”

“You want my advice?”

She shrugs in reply.

“Don’t fuck it up.”

Darcy frowns, opens her mouth to chew him out, before seeing the little smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Ohhh, I see,” she says, smirking right back. “It’s do as I say, not as I do?”

He barks a laugh and claps her on the back. “You’ll do alright, Lewis,” he says, taking his seat and strapping in as the ramp swings shut and the engine starts.

Chang rolls her eyes at them both. “Listen up,” she says. “We’re on bodyguard detail here, so I want everyone to exercise a bit of self-restraint. Lewis, you’ve had the cultural briefing so you’ll liaise with the assets. You most likely won’t need to get into a firefight, but if the assets start panicking or get out of control I do expect you to put them down with non-lethal force, understood?”

Darcy turns over her night-night pistol in her hands. “I tased a Norse god twice,” she says, with more confidence than she feels. “It won’t be a problem, boss. Ma’am. Boss-ma’am.”

They land in a field in Pennsylvania, a small green-roofed house nestled back by the trees. Chang takes point, and they fall into formation behind her with Williams on their six.

As they approach the house, Darcy can tell something’s not right. The front door stands open a few inches, and the neatly tended flower bed has a couple of bootprints right in the middle of the irises. Chang signals, and Darcy hugs the wall beside Williams, who waits, with his sidearm ready, to bust through the door. If anyone is inside, surely they can hear her heart pounding right about now.

“S’Thalin?” Chang calls into the house. “Anyone in there? We’re S.H.I.E.L.D. agents here to take you into protective custody.”

When no reply comes, Williams kicks open the door and they all fan out into the house.

“Clear!” That’s Chang, in a bedroom.

“Clear!” says Gomez, from the kitchen.

“Clear!” calls Williams from the basement.

Darcy’s in the living room, where a coffee mug lies overturned on the floor, coffee soaking into the rug, and a chair has been shoved violently up against a wall, hard enough to crack a leg.

“Lewis?” calls Chang.

“Oh yeah, clear!”

They file back into the room with her. “Reckon there was a struggle,” says Williams.

“Not enough damage,” Gomez grunts. “Left in a hurry.”

Gomez leads them back to the bootprints in the flower beds, and they follow him as he tracks through the thin band of trees into another field. Before they break through the tree line, he holds up a hand and they freeze in place, crouching low behind the bushes. When Darcy stops moving, she hears a voice.

“I know you’re in there,” it says. “I can smell you.”

It sounds like a woman, loud and brash. Darcy can’t tell at first where it’s coming from—the field looks wide and empty—until she realizes that the low concrete wall about twenty yards away conceals a hole in the ground.

The team fan out stealthily to surround the voice.

“Just sayin’,” the stranger continues, “I got four energy bombs left, and I get a paycheck whether you’re alive or dead. So what’s it going to be?”

Chang and Darcy flank the top of a set of rough concrete steps leading down into an old Cold War nuclear bunker. At the bottom a tall dark-haired woman in a red trench coat slouches against the wall, arms folded across her chest.

Agent Chang trains her weapon on the stranger. “Put your hands in the air and turn around slowly.”

The woman doesn’t flinch, just gives Chang a measuring glance and says, “Oh great. The cavalry’s here.” She does, however, raise her hands, one of which it turns out is holding a high-tech looking pistol of some kind.

“Who the hell are you?” Chang demands.

“Name’s Bounty,” says the stranger. “Job’s… well… bounty. Look, I got no beef with local law. Just let me get mine and I’ll be on my way.”

“This family has been granted asylum on Earth,” says Chang. “I’m not letting some interstellar thug kidnap them from their home.”

“It isn’t your fight,” says Bounty. “You don’t want to get between me and my bounty, and you definitely don’t want to get between the Z’Nox Empire and a bunch of defectors.”

“We take our commitments very seriously. Now, put down your weapon and we’ll let you leave without any trouble.”

There’s a long, tense moment, when Darcy isn’t sure whether the stranger will comply.

Then, Bounty smirks. “Yeah, OK. These guys were a sideline anyway. I got bigger fish to fry on Earth.” She slowly lowers her gun to the ground. Darcy and Chang each take a step back from the top of the stairs to allow her to pass, and she climbs them with slow, even steps.

Right at the top, however, she makes a lunge for Chang and flips her on her back on the stairs. She flows right into a cartwheel kick, catches Darcy in the chest, and sends her hurtling back into a tree at bonebreaking speed. Darcy slumps down, winded. Something has gone very wrong in her right shoulder, and she gasps for air without much success. She starts fumbling awkwardly under her jacket with her left hand.

Bounty is making short work of the other team members, using Williams as a human shield while she fires off a couple of shots from a second weapon. Gomez goes down twitching, but there’s no blood, so Darcy holds out hope he’s still alive. Bounty finishes up by shoving Williams down the stairs to trip over Chang, and takes off running for the tree line.

“Hey!” calls Darcy, and the bounty hunter turns back with a mocking smile. Darcy is holding up the night-night gun in her wavering left hand, and fires off two shots. One misses by a mile, but the other hits Bounty in her thigh.

Bounty starts up running again, but gets two steps before face-planting into the prickly brush.

Darcy leans her head back against the tree. “Seriously, you call yourself ‘Bounty’?” she says to the unconscious body.

Chang emerges from the bunker stairs and beelines for Gomez. “Tranqued,” is her verdict when she gets a pulse.

“Nice,” says Williams on his way over to Darcy, nodding at the other figure sprawled on the ground nearby. “Bagged an alien your first time out.”

“Yeah, well, she was biting Jubilee’s style with the headband and the—” Darcy waves a hand at the trench coat and smiles wanly up at Williams.

He crouches next to her and does a quick first aid check, his hands efficient but gentle as he feels for broken ribs.

“You’ll need to get checked out, but your ribs are probably just bruised. The arm doesn’t look so good.” He takes off his jacket to tie it into a makeshift sling and helps Darcy gently into it.

Chang gets up from where she’s been putting Bounty in cuffs and walks over to them. “Can you stand, Lewis?”

“Uh,” says Darcy, and gives it a try. Her ribs hurt like crazy as she tenses her core, but she makes it.

“Good, because you’re up.”

“Up?”

“Yeah, we still have alien friendlies and you’re the one with the cultural training.”

Darcy grimaces. She hadn’t been counting on having to talk them out of hiding while trying not to pass out from pain. Williams holds out his hand with two small white pills—painkillers, from his emergency pack—which she takes with a grateful look, and dry-swallows.

“OK, just…” she takes several deep breaths, before walking carefully down the stairs to the bunker door. “S’Thalin?” she calls. “This is Darcy Lewis, of S.H.I.E.L.D. If you’re in there, I need to talk to you about relocating your, ah, kin-unit?”

After a few moments, there comes the sound of heavy bolts sliding back—three of them, one after another, something rusty-sounding grinding deep inside the door as they move—and the door swings slowly open.

The figure that appears in the gap of the open door is a few inches taller than Darcy and heavy-set, but the thing that really jumps out when she looks at it is the fact that it’s a humanoid lizard: green scaly skin; huge, unblinking eyes; head-fin and all. She flashes on a TV show she used to watch in re-runs as a kid, and her mind helpfully provides the word _Sleestak._

_Get it together,_ she tells herself. _This_ _is what you’ve trained for._

She can’t do the full formal greeting because of her arm, but she can clasp her right fist (carefully!) in her left hand, and bow her head. The alien mirrors the gesture properly, hands held high in front of her chest.

“DarcyLewisOfShield,” says S’Thalin, and her accent is somewhere between Midwestern, Swedish, and Kiwi. She glances around nervously, even though all they can see down here is concrete wall. “Is our assailant…?”

“Unconscious, and in custody.”

It takes some negotiation, and Darcy has to bust out all the respectful phrases and body language from the Z’Nox defector section of the diplomatic handbook, but eventually S’Thalin agrees to bring her family in so S.H.I.E.L.D. can assign them to a more secure location. Darcy even manages to close the deal before passing out from pain.

When she wakes up again she’s on a quinjet, lying on a hard, flat surface. She wriggles, but can’t seem to move, and the pain that shoots through her shoulder makes her think twice about trying too hard. Her team, a couple of feet away, talks in low voices.

“All I’m saying is,” says Williams, leaning in with his elbows on his knees, “why’re we wasting resources—and good agents—on playing babysitter to a bunch of aliens?”

Chang sighs, and Darcy’s not sure whether it’s because she thinks the question is a good one or a bad one. “It’s the job, Williams. S.H.I.E.L.D. made a deal, we honor that deal. End of.”

“Don’t you have to be human to sign a deal?”

“Law’s unclear. Wasn’t like they had aliens in mind when they first wrote the contract laws.”

“They drink coffee,” says Darcy from her gurney, and for some reason it’s hilarious; a giggle bubbles up out of her throat. “They drink coffee and plant flowers. They’re trying to be good little Earthlings.”

Chang shoots her a frown, and says, “Shut up, Lewis. You’re high.” By the time Darcy’s realized what that’s about, it’s too late to say, _Not that they should have to assimilate,_ and the conversation’s moved on.

“Anyway, the S’Thalin family will be out of your hair,” Chang is saying. “We’re relocating them to a more secure location in Alaska.”

Williams sighs and shakes his head, unsatisfied, but he sits back and stops arguing.

Darcy fades in and out, and the next time she’s awake, she’s being unloaded from the quinjet. She smiles up at the S.H.I.E.L.D. medic who’s checking her vitals. “I like your face,” Darcy tells her.

The medic smiles and rolls her eyes, looks up at Chang. “First mission?” she asks, about Darcy.

“First mission.”

## Tony

The cutting-edge medical research center at Culver University has already been evacuated when they get there, so it's just them versus a bunch of faceless Hydra agents, some of whom are already down for the count. Should be a quick mop-up, then.

It's Steve, Clint, Natasha, and Tony, and since he’s the only flying Avenger, when they spot the cackling ringleader on a railing at least eight floors up in the atrium, Tony leaves the others to take care of the goons, takes the short cut up there, and lands on the walkway blocking the maniac's path.

"Your face looks familiar," says Tony at the anonymous purple full-face mask. "Wait, wait, don't tell me... you're the unholy love-child of a sock monkey and Barney the dinosaur."

Sock Monkey's only response is to draw a sword and level it at Iron Man, who laughs.

"Let me get you up to speed here, Count von Count, that pointy stick you're holding is the very height of iron-age weaponry, and despite my codename, my suit is not actually made from iron, but the latest single-crystal titanium, which NASA _wishes_ I would share with them, so you are not gonna win this one."

"Your prattling is irrelevant, Iron Man," says Sock Monkey with the hint of a German accent and absolute bucketfuls of megalomaniacal condescension. "We will get what we came for, and your Avengers will find yourselves... obsolete."

"Oh my god. Could you _be_ any more of a villain cliché? Seriously, do you get your pointers from watching Bond movies? Here's another movie for you. Seen _Indiana Jones_? You're gonna wave that—" he points at the sword "—at me a bunch, and then I'm gonna blast you with this—" he holds his palm out threateningly. "The Nazis didn't come out well in that one either."

He takes a step toward his opponent, trying to get close enough to disarm him and knock him out.

"Yeah, that's right, I do know who you are. Baron Zemo, right? Interesting file they have on you. Not as interesting as mine, but really—"

Just as he gets nearly in range, Zemo does a back-flip off the railing.

"Well, that was unexpected."

Tony launches himself into the air. He isn't really expecting that Zemo just offed himself without a fight, so he isn't too disappointed when he sees the guy running along the walkway on the floor below. Tony takes him down with a flying tackle, sending them both skittering along the floor, Zemo's sword a couple of yards out of his reach. But he's a slippery opponent, flipping himself with hands and shoulders into a standing position and leaping for the sword. Tony knocks him off-course with a repulsor blast before he gets there, picks up the sword himself, and throws it off the walkway to clatter to the ground far below.

Undaunted, Zemo grabs a steel pole, rips off the banner it's holding up, and as Tony charges him, plants one end on the floor, using it to swing himself around so his boots connect with Tony's faceplate. Tony hits the ground hard, and peels his ruined faceplate off so he can see. That was way more powerful than a regular human has any right to be, and Zemo's file said nothing about his being enhanced in any way. The file did, however, say that he's an expert swordsman, and yet he's holding that pole like it's an extension of his arm. He's way more comfortable with a staff than he was with the sword.

"Okay, Little John," says Tony between repulsor blasts and staff blows, "fill me in here. What’s Hydra want from a medical lab? Don’t you guys have your own?”

"Your insignificant mind could not begin to understand the scope of our plans. You will see soon enough. If you live, that is."

They spar for a while, neither gaining the upper hand, Zemo jumping and Tony flying from one level to the next, until there's a moment where Tony's lying on his back next to a Hydra corpse, and Zemo's somehow got a hold of the sword again, and he's leaping at Tony's exposed face with the point of it. Tony manages to get a hand up just in time, and blasts Zemo back and up to collide with the ceiling in a punishing crash. Out of the corner of his eye, Tony sees the Hydra corpse beside him, along with the pool of blood surrounding it, flicker.

What the hell?

...Oh. Of course. How many people does he know who can pull off a fake-out like that?

Tony marches over to where 'Zemo' lies face-down, seemingly winded and senseless, and flips him over with his foot.

Tony gives a mirthless laugh. “Drop it.”

"Drop what?" says the swordsman.

"Come on, Bambi, you know what I'm talking about. The illusion. Glamor. Whatever."

'Zemo' gets to his feet with ease, injuries seemingly forgotten, and graces Tony with a slow clap. There's a shimmer, and Baron Zemo's face sock is replaced with a familiar smirk, the Hydra corpse disappears, and over the comm, Tony hears Clint echo his earlier "What the hell?"

Tony can’t reply—his mic got busted along with his faceplate—so he keeps his attention on the smug god relaxing casually against a pillar, arms crossed in front of his chest.

"Oh, well done, Stark. I'm almost impressed."

"Don't be. You're done here. We're not going to let you get what you came for."

The smirk grows wider. "On the contrary, I already have it." Something flashes between Loki's long white fingers: a vial, filled with a liquid that glows an ominous green. It's gone as soon as it appears, tucked somewhere in Loki's clothing or his bag of holding or whatever interdimensional bullshit he uses to hide more crap about his person than even Natasha can manage.

"The others will be up here soon. Think you can take us all?"

Loki pushes off the pillar and stalks closer. "Really, is there any need to involve them?" he purrs. "This is between the two of us, after all." He's close enough now to lay a hand on the chest plate of Tony's armor, over the light of the arc reactor, and Tony realizes that perhaps he’s not the only one who’s been thinking of what nearly happened that night in Texas.

Tony keeps as still as he can in the face of his enemy's confusingly arousing threats... or is it a confusingly threatening come-on? Either way, not going to give him the satisfaction of an erec—uh, reaction.

"You want my attention? There are better ways to go about it than causing mayhem."

Damn, that was not supposed to come out quite so flirty.

"Oh," says Loki, leaning in to murmur near Tony's ear, "but I am so... very... good at it." Loki's breath is cool on his cheek, and Tony has to struggle to keep his own breathing steady.

There's a sound behind him like a bowstring tightening.

"Get away from him," grits Clint through clenched teeth.

"Oh, don't worry," says Loki airily, stepping back, "I'm quite done here." He fixes Tony with a glare full of menace, but Tony's close enough to see a different kind of heat in his eyes. "…For now."

And with that, he turns sharply on his heel, and between the first step and the second he has vanished.

"What the hell was that?" Clint demands, but Tony’s saved from having to respond by Steve asking over the comm for a casualty report.

"All the civilians were evacuated before we got here," Natasha says. "Three casualties: one civilian, two police. None fatal."

They regroup outside the main entrance as the cleanup teams arrive, not that there’s much this time besides property damage. No corpses, no blood. All that was illusion.

"What were Hydra after?" Steve asks.

"Not Hydra," Clint says. "Loki."

Tony winces at the sharpness of Steve and Natasha's synchronized cries of "Loki?!"

"He bailed as soon as I arrived," says Clint, arms folded. "Probably knew he couldn't take all of us."

"Yeah," says Tony. Let's go with that. "I gave him a pretty good beat-down." That he didn't seem to feel at all.

"Any idea what he was after?" Natasha asks.

"Some green glowing liquid. He showed me."

"He showed you?"

"Yeah, I think he wanted to brag that we didn't stop him."

An agent approaches with a sitrep. “Captain, I have someone from the lab saying there’s something missing.”

“What is it?”

“I didn’t really understand the details, sir,” he says, handing Cap a file folder, “but they’re experimenting with some serum and its effects on subjects exposed to gamma radiation.”

_Gamma radiation?_ Oh, that cannot be good.

Cap flips through the pages. "Hmm."

“Hmm?” Tony asks. “What hmm?” If this involves Bruce—the Hulk—he needs to know.

“Says here that the thief stole a handful of vials, and destroyed the rest, along with all notes.”

“Guess Loki really wanted this information to himself, huh?” says Clint. “Typical power trip.”

Tony is silent as they head back home. Something about this doesn’t sit right. If Loki wanted to synthesize the serum, he would’ve stolen the notes, not destroyed them.

Was that whole charade a test? Did Loki expect—or want—him to see through it? Why bait him, specifically? What does Loki plan for that serum—is Bruce in danger? Would it be wishful thinking to imagine that Loki destroyed the research as a favor for the guy who once saved his life?

And, most important of all, how cold of a shower can a person take without risking hypothermia?


	9. Drowned and Dreamed This Moment

## Tony

It never stops surprising Tony when people look to him as a hero.

He's a professional jackass, dammit. That is his job. Why are people looking to him to rescue them? He doesn't do rescuing.

See, like this. Right now. When he lands in the middle of the street (5th Ave, sunny Saturday afternoon, shoppers and tourists everywhere), blasts a flying, chittering robot out of the air with his repulsor, and strides toward the swarm it came from, trying to distract it from the family huddling behind a taxi on his right. Steve's running in, giving him that curt soldier's nod that can't quite disguise his smile, his shield covering the kids as he hustles them to safety, and Captain America trusts him to have his back, to step up and do the right thing, to be a hero. It was much easier when Steve was yelling about Tony being too selfish ever to fight for anyone but himself, because that's an expectation he's spent his whole life gleefully living down to.

The robots are pieces of junk, barely smarter than drones, crap even Justin Hammer would be ashamed to call a prototype. He thinks they're supposed to act as a hive, but they seem to have a hard time telling friend from foe. It'd be funny, if there weren't civilians getting caught up in it.

"You gotta be kidding me," he says. "Does this make anyone else miss Doom? At least he has some professional pride."

"What did I say about chatter on the comm, Iron Man?" Steve seems to feel like he hasn’t done his duty by the team if he doesn't go through the motions of keeping him in line, but Tony can hear the smile.  


"That you missed my smart mouth while I was out of action?" He grabs the final robot out of the air, crushes its propulsion, and drops it on the ground where it twitches like a fly with its wings cut off. "Anyway, looks like we're all done here." His helmet folds itself away and he surveys the wreckage. Not too bad, he thinks. Nowhere near like the fight a couple weeks ago in Miami. They're getting better at keeping the collateral damage in check. He claps his hands a couple times, ringing metallic in the gauntlets. "Okay, people, that's a wrap! I'll be in my trailer."

By which he means he'll be leaning against a S.H.I.E.L.D. van while Bruce sits in back of it and gets patched up by the medics.

"Never thought these tin cans could put a dent in you, Shrek."

Bruce winces as an EMT dabs his neck with alcohol.

"Oh, I, wasn’t in the fight. Seemed like you had things under control. Then a robot bug thing came out of nowhere and scratched me up. Don't worry, I, uh, I think it came off worse in the end." He nods to the mangled pile of scrap that Tony just pulverized, and twists his mouth into a wry smile. "My hero!"

"Well, whaddaya say, Jolly Green? Can your hero get you out of here?"

The medic tending Bruce's injury looks up. "I'm afraid I can't let you do that just yet. Director Fury was very specific that injuries to Dr. Banner need at least a few hours’ observation back at Medical."

She's one of those ruthlessly competent S.H.I.E.L.D. employees—Tony thinks they make them in a factory somewhere—who's always around in the aftermath of Avenger chaos. This one's wigging him out more than a little, though. Hair pulled up tight in a bun, cheekbones like razors, and, when she catches him looking at her, the hint of a vicious little smile. He shudders involuntarily.

"Want me to come with you?" He offers to Bruce.

"Sorry, Iron Man, no passengers," says the sharp-looking medic, bundling Bruce into the ambulance and slamming the doors behind him.

“If I don’t hear from him, I’m staging a jailbreak!” Tony calls after the medic as she gets into the driver’s seat.

They peel out maybe a little too fast, leaving Tony standing behind in the dust and wondering what just happened. There've been a few unsatisfying fights lately, but this one didn't even feel like a warmup. Clint and Natasha are off in Burma or Bermuda or Borneo on some secret mission, and they didn't even call in Thor from his vacation in New Mexico. It took him and Steve less time to take care of this than they usually spend sparring.

“If you’re bored, you could help with the cleanup,” says Steve, coming up behind him.

“No, please don’t ‘help’,” says a passing S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. “We’ve got it handled.”

Tony recognizes her from the aftermath of other Avengers missions and reaches out to snag her before she can bustle off. “Hey, uh, Chen?”

“Chang.”

“Yeah, Chang.” He points to the drone that hit Bruce. “Have that piece of robotic crap packed up and shipped to the tower. Don’t let anyone touch it.”

She waits, with a pointed look.

“Um… please?” he ventures. He can see Steve suppressing a laugh out of the corner of his eye.

“No problem, Mr. Stark.” Chang runs off to give instructions to the cleanup crew.

 “You know what I keep thinking?” he remarks to Cap as they watch someone in a S.H.I.E.L.D. medic’s uniform get wheeled out of an alley on a gurney.

“This whole fight was too easy?”

Tony nods. “I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

## Darcy

Darcy slides her tray over to Chang. Somehow, S.H.I.E.L.D. can manage to turn mac and cheese into inedible gloop, but Chang can inhale that shit like she hasn't eaten in weeks.

"Here, Monica, I know you love this crap. I’m choosing life instead."

Chang hands her a beer in exchange.

"See, I think I got the better end of this deal," says Darcy, taking a long pull on the bottle.

"You can have them all,” says Chang distractedly. She takes a couple of bites of Darcy’s mac and cheese but her heart doesn’t seem in it. She sighs, puts down her fork, and pushes away her tray.

“Something up?”

Chang shakes her head. “I don’t know. Just something’s not sitting right.”

“Mess hall food’ll do that to you.”

That gets a huff of laughter out of Chang. “No, I mean with the op today.”

“Thought it was quick and clean? Or did you just say that so I won’t feel bad about having to sit it out?” Darcy holds up her right arm. The fracture is mostly healed, and she’s mostly through physical therapy, but she won’t be back in the field for another couple of weeks at least.

Chang shrugs. “You ever see a Roomba chase down a big dog and attack it?”

“Uh… no?”

“Exactly,” says Chang, cryptically.

Williams looks over from the next table, where he and Gomez are playing poker for M&Ms. “Let the higher-ups worry about it. You did your clean-up for the Avengers. Duty discharged.”

“I prefer to think of it as _back-up_ for the Avengers,” mutters Darcy.

 “Don’t delude yourself. And don’t get invested,” he says with a pointed glance at Chang.

“I’m already invested,” she says. “This is my team. We might not get the respect we deserve, but I don’t believe in half-assing things. And I have a gut feeling about this.”

"This’ll cure what ails you, Chang," He holds up a bottle of Jack Daniels.

“Well, it’d give me a different kind of gut feeling, that’s for sure,” she replies, getting up. “But no thanks. I think I need to oversee a delivery.”

“Your loss,” says Gomez as she leaves the mess. “Lewis, am I dealing you in?”

"She can't afford the buy-in," says Williams, grinning.

Darcy just tosses two bags of M&Ms down on the table and sits down backwards on a chair.

“Hey Williams,” she says over her cards, “I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

“I say a lot of things, Lewis.”

“Too many,” grunts Gomez in agreement.

“About wasting resources on aliens. That’s what you said, right? I mean, I was kind of on another planet myself at the time…”

Gomez is shaking his head. “Don’t get him started,” he sighs.

“What a clusterfuck,” says Williams. “You should never have gotten hurt. We should’ve shot that alien chick on sight, but no. We gotta tiptoe around, offering them free passage, and asylum, and what have you. Then good agents like you get caught in the crossfire.”

Darcy doesn’t allow her disgust at the anti-alien tirade to show, but she does let out her pleased little grin at the compliment. “You think I’m a good agent? I’ve only been on one field mission.”

“Yeah, and on that mission, you took down a hostile with superstrength while you had a broken arm, and brought in the assets while you were high on painkillers.”

“Williams here crapped his pants on his first mission,” puts in Gomez, laying down his winning hand.

Williams sighs and pushes a small pile of M&Ms over to Gomez. “And Gomez cried, so I hear. All I’m saying is, even if I think the mission was bullshit, you did good.”

“Alright, ladies,” says Gomez, pushing back his chair. “I’m gonna hit the hay.”

Darcy lets Williams deal her another round.

“It does seem like half our ops involve aliens,” she says, prodding him for more.

“They know we’re here now. Fury said the Avengers are supposed to be a deterrent, but where’s the deterrent if we keep inviting them here and giving them houses in the Pennsylvania countryside?”

“People say they’re here whether we want them or not.”

“But that doesn’t mean we have to encourage them.” He knocks back the rest of his bourbon and pours another. “I’m not saying go to war, I’m just saying when we find them, we stick them back in their ships and send them back where they came from. Those lizard-looking ones, what were they, Zox defectors?”

“Z’Nox.”

“So now we’re pissing off the Z’Nox Empire by harboring their fugitives. That’s asking for trouble. S.H.I.E.L.D. are used to being the big fish—but the pond just got way bigger. And what about the ones we say are ‘friendly’?”

“What about them?”

“You don’t really believe their first loyalty is to Earth, do you? Your friend, Thor—”

“He’s not.”

“—is the prince of a—what?”

Darcy takes a deep breath. Until now, she’s just been giving Williams rope with which to hang himself. This is where she has to start with the spin and misdirection—which she knows will make her squirm with guilt, like something oily has gotten under her skin.

“He’s Jane’s friend. Boyfriend. Jane and I, we used to be close, but since Thor showed up it’s been all Asgard this and Bifrost that. She’s making these huge scientific breakthroughs, and she’s sharing them with this alien dude whose dad once trashed the whole of Earth as collateral damage in a war.” In the narrowest sense, not one word of that is a lie. It’s even true that she and Jane aren’t as close as they used to be; it’s just more because Darcy quit her internship to join S.H.I.E.L.D. than because of anything Jane did.

Williams is looking at her appraisingly. She returns his gaze, takes another long sip of her whiskey.

“You and me,” he says finally. “We should talk.”

Darcy lets a smile spread across her face. “Looking forward to it,” she says.

## Tony

_He breaks the surface of the water long enough to swallow a gulp of air._

_"Again," says a voice behind him, and a broad hand on the back of his neck forces him down, struggling, knowing that if he inhales he'll just get a burning lungful of filthy water, but unable to stop himself anyway._

_Up. Gasp. Struggle._

_"Again."_

  
_Plunge. Struggle. Up for air._

  
_"Again."_

_This is wrong. The voice shouldn’t speak English. It shouldn’t have a cultivated British-ish accent. They should not pull him at last from the tub, throw him to the ground, and leave him there unattended, retching and gagging, but unmenaced by goons while the guy with the accent paces somewhere just outside of his view. And they especially should not have his hands cuffed in front of him with a long chain between. He doesn't waste time questioning his luck, just surges to his feet and throws the chain around his captor's neck, pulling tight... tighter... while the man scrabbles his fingers vainly at it._

_He could finish it now. He could force this guy to unlock the door. Or he could take him out, make sure he never does this to anyone else. Except..._

  
_Loki._

_He loosens the chain in his shock._

_"What's wrong, Stark?" Loki hisses, and he's not even moving to break free. "Don't you want to end me?"_

***

“Sir,” Jarvis’ voice breaks into his dream, “you have a visitor.”

He sits up, wipes the drool off his chin, and feels his face in case sleeping on his workbench left creases, not that there’s anything he can do about it.

“Oh wow,” says the woman in S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform as she steps out of the cargo elevator. “When Jarvis said to go to the workshop, I wasn’t expecting—” she waves a hand around to take in the holographic displays and the Iron Man suit currently under repair on one of the benches. She pulls a pallet jack behind her, loaded down with a secure metal crate about three feet to each side.

“Oh, um, hey Chang,” says Tony, waving a hand of his own, to hide his open files. He takes a swig from the coffee cup on his desk—cold, ugh—and scrubs at his face to wake himself up. “Didn’t think you were a gopher.”

“Normally, I’m not,” she says, keying in a code to open the crate, “but I wanted to show you what I found.”

“What you found?”  


The lid pops open, revealing the crushed robot bug nestled in foam. Being careful to touch only the foam, Chang gently lifts it onto a workbench and uses a pen to lift one of the forelegs. When Tony reaches out to touch it, she swats his hand away.

“Careful! You’re worse than my three-year-old nephew!”

“I get that a lot.”

“I was thinking, this thing made a beeline for Dr. Banner, even though he wasn’t in the fight. That struck me as a bit weird, so I took a closer look at it, and look what I found.” She points to the tip of the leg, where it ends in a needle-fine point. A smear of glowing green fluid has dried on the end.

Tony blinks a couple of times while the implications sink in. “Son of a—”

“It’s a delivery system for some kind of serum.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that. Jarvis? Get S.H.I.E.L.D. Medical on the line.”

The phone rings twice before a terse agent picks up. “No, sir,” he says when questioned, “Dr. Banner was not admitted to Medical this afternoon.”

“Did Fury leave special instructions regarding him?”

“Not that I’m aware.”

“There was one person sent to Medical, though,” Chang breaks in. “Someone was hurt on the op this afternoon?”

“Yes ma’am. A S.H.I.E.L.D. EMT was found unconscious after the attack. ” His voice turns concerned. “We’re still waiting for her to wake up, but as far as we can tell she wasn’t involved in the fighting. It’s a bit of a mystery around here.”

“Maybe not,” says Tony. “Send her picture over to me, will you?”

Sure enough, when the cell phone picture hits his email, the face—despite the bruises and the nose tube—is familiar. He remembers those same lips from a few hours ago, twisted into a vicious smirk, and those same hands herding his best friend into an ambulance. But this woman’s been unconscious since before Bruce left the scene.

The rage comes bubbling up unexpectedly. He lets out what can only be described as a growl, and sweeps a swath of tools and components off a bench with a metallic clatter.

Chang takes a couple of nervous steps back. “What… what is it?”

“Nothing you can help me with,” he snarls. Then, seeing her expression, he scrubs his hand over his face and reels it back in, flipping back to charming and breezy. “You are brilliant. Give yourself a raise on the way out.”

“Uh-huh,” says Chang, still backing away. “You’re welcome, I guess?” The elevator doors open to let her in. “Thanks, Jarvis. You know, I’ve always wanted to meet an AI…”

As soon as she’s gone, Tony drops into his chair, suddenly exhausted. It’s been months since he had a decent night’s sleep; he feels gray and thin, like watery porridge. He allows himself about twenty seconds before jumping back up and—with heavy-duty gloves—transferring the insect bot to the newly-cleared workbench. Dummy whirs around with a broom, pushing the debris around, and Tony has to shoo him away.

“Bzzzt! Get lost,” he says. “If you keep getting under my feet I’ll have you made into a speak ‘n’ spell.”

Poking around in bot-guts, he grunts in disgust. “Seriously, what is this, someone’s middle school project? Wow, something’s still blinking in here—guess not all of it’s complete junk. Huh.” He lifts out the component with tweezers. “Some kind of receiver… remote controlled? Wonder if I could—hey Jarv?”

“Sir?”

“Can you trace this signal back to its source?”

"The signal appears to originate from somewhere in upstate New York, sir. I'm trying to narrow it down."

“Ready the Mark XI,” he says, striding over to get suited up.

“Sir, might I advise—”

“No you might not.”

“—that aside from your recent twenty-minute nap you have been awake for nearly thirty-seven hours and your vitals indicate that you are in no state to—”

“Armor, Jarvis. Now.”

It obediently starts assembling itself around him.

“Sir, do you wish me to alert Captain Rogers?”

“Fine, tell him where I’m going, but I’m not waiting around for him to get his lazy ass out of bed.” Bruce has been missing for—he glances at the time display in his HUD—ten hours already, since sometime mid-afternoon. That’s a long time to spend at Loki’s mercy. And it is Loki, it has to be. The glowing green serum Loki flaunted at him back at Culver. The gamma radiation experiments they’d been doing there. Loki wants him to know who’s taken Bruce, is goading him on deliberately.

He doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about whether it’s a good idea to let himself be goaded.

Jarvis directs him to a shitty little warehouse in an abandoned industrial park outside a shitty little town upstate.

"Talk to me, Jarvis."

"Records indicate that several hours ago the building was drawing an unusual amount of power, sir."

"As in enough for a flying robot army?"

"Quite."

He lands on the roof, as quiet as he can manage in a couple hundred pounds of armor, and kneels down to look through a skylight.

Four industrial benches are pushed together, and on them… Well, let’s just say Tony’s seen the Hulk sleeping before, usually in the aftermath of a battle in the exhausted slumber of the happily smash-satiated. Here, though, his green skin is pallid and waxy, and apart from the slow rise and fall of his chest there’s no movement at all. He’s strapped down to the table, not that there are restraints that would hold him if he woke up and wanted out. But there’s little chance he’ll be doing that, not with the glowing green liquid dripping slowly into him via an IV. From the other arm comes a tube flowing thickly with a darker fluid—Bruce’s blood, he realizes, siphoning slowly into a bag.

The weirdest thing about this, Tony thinks, is seeing the Hulk unconscious. Usually when he passes out from smash satiation, he reverts back to his Bruce state. Something in the serum must be keeping him transformed.

A guy in a lab coat hovers about, taking readings, monitoring a bank of computer screens, making notes on a clipboard. Tony can see no other movement, not even guards. He feels contrarily pissed at how shoddy this setup is. What, does Loki _want_ him to come bursting in and rescue Bruce?

…Oh. Of course he does.

Rage flaring up in his chest, Tony punches through the skylight and hurls himself down into the wide open warehouse space, plowing into the astonished lab-coat guy, skidding across the bare concrete floor. He ends with one armored knee on the guy's chest, one hand gripping his shirt, and the other palm aimed at his head in a clear threat.

"Talk," he spits.

"I—I don't know anything!" The guy's a gibbering wreck. "I’m supposed to monitor the Hulk guy, record his vitals and things. I kept telling him I’m a Robotics Engineering student, not a doctor, but he won’t listen!"

"Where? Tell me where he is!"

"Are you looking for me?" A familiar voice sounds behind them, and crisp footsteps approach.

"I was doing it! I did everything you asked, and Iron Man just came out of nowhere!" The lab coat guy whimpers and begs his boss, "Please don't hurt me!"

Tony lets him go with a disgusted snort, gets up, and turns around to face the newcomer. Lab Coat Guy takes this opportunity to book it through the back door of the warehouse.

"Loki," says Tony. "This is a bit of a step down for you, isn't it?" He gestures around at the dusty warehouse, with its mangled pieces of broken equipment, its many shattered windows, and its graffittied walls.

"Indeed. I'm sure it can't live up either to the luxurious motels to which you are accustomed."

Tony tries not to react to the vivid image that his mind provides him of a particular incident sitting outside a particular motel, and Loki smirks at his utter failure.

Loki paces toward him. He’s wearing his own skin today, but he doesn’t look comfortable in it. His movements are less fluid and graceful than usual. "But enough of that. I assume you've come for Dr. Banner."

"I assume you knew I would."

He gets only a smile in reply. They circle each other, Loki making sure to keep the Hulk between them.

“What are we doing here, Snowflake? You save my life, then, what? Four months, you don’t call, you don’t write. You kidnap my best friend. Is that like the Loki equivalent of leaving dead pigeons on my doorstep as a gift?”

Tony tenses as Loki reaches out with one graceful hand and strokes the Hulk’s brow almost tenderly.

"He is a most interesting specimen, is he not? So gentle a man, yet so fierce a beast."

"He's not a beast, or a specimen; he's the guy who saved your skinny ass."

"And I should feel grateful?"

"Look, I'm not here to psychoanalyze your problems, princess. Just hand over my friend, and we can all walk out of here."

Loki runs one hand sensually over a tray of medical implements. He draws his lips back from his teeth in a mirthless grin. "In answer to your question, no. I did not bring him here simply to goad you. I have my plans, and the role your friend will play in them is great indeed."

Tony is rapidly coming to understand what Bruce must feel like when the rage takes over. If his muscles could knot up and burst out of his armor, they would. He strides over to Loki and takes a swing, fully expecting to punch straight through an illusion and end up on his ass, but no, he makes contact with the real thing, sending Loki flying with unexpected velocity into the cinderblock wall.

Loki spits out a thick glob of blood and gives him a feral snarl, but Tony's over there in a heartbeat, grasping Loki by the lapels and hauling him to his feet. He punches him in the face three, maybe four times, then throws him into the medical cart, sending stainless steel tools flying in a glittering shower. When Loki staggers to his feet, Tony sends out a quick burst from his boot repulsors, flying into him with the force of a train, and crashing them both into the opposite wall. Dust and plaster shards fall from the ceiling, and the wall groans ominously. Tony picks up his opponent and is about to start pummeling again, when he realizes something's wrong here.

"Fight back, damn you! Why aren't you fighting back?"

Loki just gives that unsettling grin, with blood smeared across his teeth, so Tony punches him again, but it only makes an uneasy, sick feeling nestle itself into his stomach.

Loki grasps his wrist with one hand, uses it to pull himself closer, so his face is right up in Tony's.

"What's wrong, Stark?" Loki hisses, his voice low and intense. "Don't you want to end me?"

Tony pauses like that for several long seconds, his skin crawling with unease. How could Loki have echoed his dream so exactly? Has the god been all up in his nightmares, or did they share some kind of weird lucid dream experience?

He throws the trickster into the bank of computers, which fizz and spark, and Loki doesn’t get back up. Instead of going to whale on him some more, Tony stalks over to the Hulk and rips both IVs out of his arms.

“C’mon, c’mon,” he says, urging Jolly Green to wake up. That doesn’t happen, but after a few moments he starts shrinking down, green bleeding to pink, and the chains restraining him fall limply off.

“Good enough,” says Tony. He grabs the bag of Hulk blood in one hand, lifts his friend to his chest with the other, and takes off through the hole he made in the roof.


	10. Hiding out Between the Lines

## Tony

_The spring night air is chill on his skin and the pixieish girl in his lap presses closer for warmth, her mouth hot on his. She snakes her hand under the waistband of his jeans, and his shivers turn to heat as lust coils in his belly. A moan escapes his mouth as her fingers wrap around him, and her smile is knowing and warm._

_She wraps her other arm around his back, deceptively strong, and he arches against it as his pleasure builds._

_Suddenly, another hand is tight in his hair and he is yanked away, the pixie girl falling back onto her elbows. Sharpness at his throat and a glint of silver, and he is thrown down onto his back, choking and gagging, and he can see now that his attacker is also Loki, Loki in leathers and armor, Loki with anguish on his face as he stalks toward his other self, who is scooting backward on her butt and hands. Not fast enough because Loki falls on her—on himself—with the knife flashing, and Tony slumps back, his vision bleeding into red before he gasps awake._

***

Tony leans on the bathroom counter, staring at himself in the mirror. He actually looks for the fresh mark of the knife at his throat, the dream was so vivid, but all he sees is the slowly healing, months-old scar.

He was trying to avoid sleeping, but his exhausted body finally overrode him and he fell asleep on his folded arms at his workbench, waking to find he was still holding the component he’d been working on. It’s unsalvageable now, pins bent and crushed.

At least he didn’t murder Loki this time; somehow those dreams are worse than the ones where Loki kills him.

He splashes water on his face, not that it’ll help, and wanders back into the workshop.

Maybe it would do him good to work on a different project, but he knows it would be pointless. His mind keeps drifting back to this, Project Reindeer Games, and he knows himself well enough to realize that he can’t be free of it until he’s pursued it to the end. If he can’t figure Loki out, the very least he can do is keep tabs on him.

“Pull up the energy signatures again,” he says to the air.

“Certainly, sir. However, I must remind you that we have run every available analysis.”

“I know, I know. It just… I’m missing something here.”

Each encounter with Loki provided his suit’s scanners with plenty of data, maybe too much. At first he thought the other signatures were just noise, but soon it was obvious. This one occurred when Loki was shapeshifted into another form, that one while maintaining illusions, this spike was teleportation. The Jotun form threw him for a while. But under all of it, there’s one signature that’s characteristically _Loki_.

He tells himself that it’s his job to prove that ‘magic’ is quantifiable in some way. You know, for science.

***

“They’ve been here a couple of weeks,” says Black Widow over the comm. “Three at the outside.”

Normally it’d be Cap or Hawkeye with her on this kind of mission, but they’re on some S.H.I.E.L.D. op with Coulson in South Dakota, so here Tony is, crouched on a roof across the street with the suitcase suit at the ready, just in case she needs backup. Better than being in South Dakota, at least. He tracks her movements through his binoculars, from room to room in the little apartment.

“Any idea what aliens are doing in an apartment in Queens?” He asks.

“Not yet,” she replies, leafing through a pile of papers on a desk. “They’re looking for something, can’t tell what. There’s a map. And a list, some items crossed off.” She photographs the papers one by one before returning them to the stack.

“We have contact!” breaks in a voice over the comm, low but urgent. Agent Chang, the leader of their junior S.H.I.E.L.D. backup team. Tony’s opinion of her—and them—has improved since she led him to the breakthrough that located Bruce. Plus, it’s nice having Darcy around sometimes; she raises Coulson’s blood pressure in a way that’s pretty entertaining to watch.

Tony catches movement in his peripheral vision and swings the binoculars over to the side entrance to the apartment building where it opens onto an alley. “Confirmed,” he says. “Three, um, accountant-looking types headed your way. You sure these are our hostiles, Chang?”

“They’re shapeshifters, Iron Man,” she says drily. “And there are four of them.”

“Four?” Tony says, scanning the street. Sure enough, another figure slips cat-like into the alley behind them, keeping a dumpster between it and the other three. “Huh. Not sure that last one is one of them. Looks like it’s spying.”

“Another faction?” says Chang. “This just got complicated. Get out of there, Widow.”

“Negative,” says Natasha. “We need this intel.” Tony sees her pull a small electronic device out of a drawer and stash it somewhere. Who knows where, in that catsuit, and the one time he asked he got a cool gaze in reply that promised a painful death if he ever mentioned it again.

Then she freezes, head cocked, listening.

A quick dash puts her out of sight before the door cracks open and the three aliens file in stealthily. They got up there inhumanly fast, Tony realizes.

The one in front glances back at another, inclines her head toward the room where Natasha’s hiding, like an order. The second one pulls something from his belt, crouches down, and rolls it along the floor.

“Natasha!” Tony yells, activating his suit. It folds around him, too slow, as he sees a yellow gas flooding the room.

He’s diving before the suit’s even closed, giving a burst from his boot repulsors as soon as they come online, and crashes through the window into the one who gave the order. They roll, tumbling over each other, and the alien leaps to her feet faster than Tony can manage in his armor.

He whips up his hand, blasts her backward through the door, the repulsor leaving a smoking ring on her chest, but before he can swing around to take care of the others a pulse goes through him and everything seizes up—the joints of his armor and the joints of his body both—and the HUD goes dark.

“Jarvis, c’mon J,” he says, locked in place in his iron coffin.

The alien shapeshifter dude stalks up in front of him and plants on hand flat on his chest. With a wickedly smug grin, he gives a gentle shove, and Tony falls backward with a clank that rattles through his bones. The shapeshifter looms over him, flipping some alien device over and over in his hand.

“Jarvis?” He can’t keep the note of panic out of his voice. “Tell me you’re still there, buddy!”

It’s a long few moments before the HUD lights flicker back to life.

“Rebooting, sir,” comes the familiar English accent. “Twenty seconds remaining.”

The alien crouches down on one knee beside him, gives him a smug smile, and reaches out with the device for another zap. Its mouth is moving but Tony can’t hear the words.

Every instinct in Tony is telling him to tense up, but nothing responds.

“I don’t have twenty seconds, J! Hurry it up!”

The clank of the device touching the armor echoes through the hollow chamber inside, and Tony’s heart is beating out of his chest in panic, and this is Obie, it’s Obie all over again and Tony paralyzed on his couch and someone stealing the life from him as he’s forced to sit and watch, and—

Before he can even register the hands grasping each side of the alien’s head, its neck gives a sickening snap and it slumps, sliding off him to the ground. Another figure is looming over him now, reaching down a hand to help him to his feet.

“Reboot complete,” says Jarvis, and that’s great, no really, two seconds too long on a reboot and his own tech nearly kills him yet again.

Sighing, Tony grasps the hand, allows himself to be pulled upright.

“What—?” he says to the newcomer, blinking stupidly inside his helmet. The fourth figure, he realizes. The catlike one stalking the others in the alley. Tall, dark, and… “Loki?”

Loki’s all business today. Both in appearance (a couple inches shorter than his full height, male, mid-forties in appearance, slick business suit) and in demeanor.

“Basic countermeasures, Stark,” he says, and Tony reflexively closes his fist around the alien device as it’s thrust into his hand. “Develop some.” His tone is aiming for ‘terse’ but a note of worry has crept in. Tony elects not to call him on it, just watches him stride over to the desk to rummage among the things Natasha was looking at just a few minutes ago.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I could ask the same of you.” Loki doesn’t look up or pause in his search.

“It’s my planet; I live here. Besides, I asked first.”

Loki’s face contorts into a scowl, and Tony’s folding his arms defensively until he realizes that it’s aimed at something he’s found on the desk.

“What?” Tony demands.

“This is a pitiful price.”

“Huh?”

“The Titan’s bounty is an insult.”

Tony blinks. “Wait, are you—there’s a price on your head, and you’re pissed that it’s too low? Is that what’s happening here?”

“I came here to rid myself of a nuisance—many thanks for your assistance with that, by the by—and find that my pursuers are the dregs of the galaxy, armed with toys.”

There’s a scraping sound from behind him, from the direction of the bedroom where Natasha was hiding, and Tony suddenly remembers the third alien assailant. He swings around, ready for a fight, but what he sees is Nat, shuffling unsteadily through the doorway, dragging a body (dead or unconscious, he can’t tell) by one ankle. She frowns, blinks her bloodshot eyes at him a couple of times, can’t seem to make them focus.

“Who’re you talking to?” she says blearily, sounding younger than he’s ever heard her, and wobbles. He rushes forward and manages to get his hands under her armpits before she face-plants on the ground, hoping she’s too out of it to remember this later.

When he turns around, of course, Loki is gone.

***

Pepper adjusts the wide brim of her sun hat and sips from her glass of wine.

“See?” she says, leaning back in her chair to survey the bustling street, safe in the little bubble of quiet under their table umbrella. “Vacation. Just what you needed.”

“Does it count as a vacation if I have to spend four days of it in conference rooms with suits?” He pouts a little, for show, because no way is he actually going to come out and say that he’s glad she made him take the long weekend in Florence after business was concluded.

“Tony, you’re wearing a suit.”

“Only because you send me home to change when I show up in a Black Sabbath t-shirt.”

This is the calmest he’s felt in months. He’s even switched from hard liquor to wine for this trip, because when in Rome—uh, Florence—yadda yadda. It’s been at least forty minutes since he thought about what might happen if something goes down in New York while he’s not there. Well, forty minutes apart from this right now, but this doesn’t count because it’s just _thinking_ about thinking, and he’s not anxious in the slightest.

Sip wine. Swallow. Slow breaths.

“I’ve been worried about you,” Pepper says, leaning across the table to rest a hand on one of his.

“You’re always worried about me,” he says. “It’s why—well, you know.” Why she used to live from one day to the next not knowing if he’d ever come home. Why they broke up.

She takes her hand back, and he’s suddenly sorry he said anything.

“You’ve been different since you were injured.”

“Which time?”

“That’s not funny, Tony.”

Yeah, probably not. Probably counter-productive if his goal is not to have this conversation again.

She drains the rest of her wine, sets the empty glass on the table, and twirls it by the stem for a few moments, thinking. Deciding which approach to take, maybe, or whether it’s worth taking an approach at all.

“You were doing so well. Drinking less, sleeping at least once every other day. More even-keel. The Avengers are good for you. Or they were.”

“They still are. You know me; even-keel is just one extreme of how I act.” It’s his turn to watch the brightly-colored flow of tourists in the street, anything to avoid looking her in the eye. He knows the truth of what she’s saying, which is as good a reason as any to file it away and not think about it anymore.

She looks at her watch, obviously deciding it’s best not to push things right now. “Time to go.”

Tony can’t quite remember when and why he agreed to go to the archaeological museum, but Pepper’s managed to get an appointment with one of the Egyptologists for a personal tour. Well, there are worse ways to spend an afternoon. (Arguing about whether his behavior is ‘disturbingly self-destructive’, for one.)

When they walk in the admittedly impressive entrance to the museum, he’s all set to follow her around on autopilot, tuning out the Egyptologist and designing a suit upgrade in his head, but right away his attention is grabbed by something else.

“You know what,” he says to Pepper, “you don’t really need me tagging along. Why don’t I swing by the stuff I want to look at, maybe check out the gift shop, and I’ll meet you in that little café outside.”

She gives a long-suffering sigh. “I think I’m more or less immune to your impatience by now.” She is, but she’s not actually trying to argue him into coming.

He squeezes her wrist gratefully and watches her greet the Egyptologist, waiting until they’re out of sight before turning to the sign announcing _Sagas of the Norse_ , a temporary touring exhibit.

_This is stupid,_ he thinks. He doesn’t know what he hopes he’ll see. Just a bunch of rusty old swords and jewelry they dug up out of some poor Viking schmuck’s grave. And for the most part, he’s right. He’s in the second room of the exhibit giving serious consideration to the gift shop/café plan (is there even a gift shop?), when he notices a small case containing just one object: a silver dagger, elaborately engraved on both hilt and blade. It looks different to the other objects on display. Less practical, for starters; silver’s a shitty material for a weapon, way too soft and malleable. The engravings are finer, too. He wonders if this got misfiled somehow, if it’s from the wrong era.

He feels rather than hears someone step up beside him to look at the display.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” she says, in Italian. And her accent’s impeccable, and she’s the very picture of Italian chic—green shorts and a loose ivory-colored top, dark hair tumbled about her shoulders, and long tan legs—but somehow he just _knows_.

He also knows that his next line is supposed to be, “Beautiful indeed,” while looking at her and not at the knife, but he decides not to play.

“One of yours, was it?” he asks, in English, and is treated to a single raised eyebrow. Bingo.

“Not yet.”

“And what are the odds that during the same three days I’m on vacation halfway around the planet, you’re here as well?”

“For the gods, there are no coincidences.”

“Well, I’m not a god, and you can keep your destiny to yourself, thanks.”

“That’s the thing about destiny, Stark. Nobody gets to choose.”

“I feel like we’ve had this argument before.”

“We are destined to repeat it.” And that’s a smile. Not a smirk, an actual smile. It’s gone just as quickly, of course, but for a fleeting moment it was there.

"That’s a good color on you,” he says, and he gestures to her clothes, but what he means is, _I wish I could see this side of you more often._

If she understands, she gives no indication.

Her attention is on the dagger again, her left hand making surreptitious gestures at her side, and she’s mumbling something in alien.

When she reaches through the glass into the case, plucking the dagger from its mount, he does nothing. Somehow, this is exactly what he’s expected all along, and what’s he going to do, anyway? Throw down against a god, with no armor and no backup? And all for what, some thousand-year-old knife that can’t even cut anything? So yeah, he just lets her take it, doesn’t even blink when, as she pulls it away, it leaves behind an exact twin in its place. He figures it’ll be hours before the illusion wears off and they realize it’s missing.

With a flourish, she disappears it. She’s even carrying one of those giant purses as part of her disguise, but of course it doesn’t go in there.

“Show off,” he mutters.

The smirk’s back, but she threads her arm through his and leans into him as she leads them back out the front entrance.

She kisses him on each cheek in turn, and before she turns away, she breathes into his ear, “You’ll be seeing me soon.”

“Ciao, bella,” he says to her retreating back, and then he heads into the nearest bar and orders a martini.


	11. You Better Know What You're Fighting For

## Tony

_He is falling._

_His eyes are open, he can tell his eyes are open, but the vast blackness stretches out in every direction. Shouldn't there be stars? There should be stars. Stars, and galaxies, and uncharted nebulae and all the wonders of the universe, but there's nothing. Just... void. He shouts, but there's not even an echo. He imagines the sound rippling out forever, touching nothing, unheard._

_No. Not nothing._

_Something is out there. He can't sense it in any way he can explain; can't hear it, can't see it, smell it... But he knows it's there, and he knows it means him ill. A malevolent force, a will, pressing in on him, sending out exploratory tendrils to snake their way into his mind. It wants in. It wants him. What does it want from him?_

_He feels it sift through his memories, wringing them out, holding them up for scrutiny._

_Paralyzed on his couch, his breath caught in his chest, his heart racing toward its end—_

_"I could have done it, father! I could have done it! For you! For all of us—"_

_Choking, filthy water—_

_"You think you know pain? You will long for something as sweet as pain—"_

_Falling. The portal closing behind him as the concussive blast from the bomb reaches him. Dying, so far from home—_

_"I am the monster parents tell their children about at night—"_

_"My greatest creation—"_

_He gives up the struggle, lets his mind be subsumed. What's the point in fighting when this is all he is, all he'll ever be—_

"Sir, Captain Rogers has been attempting to access the suite for the past four minutes. Shall I let him in? Apparently there is an emergency."

***

A blast from the repulsor knocks the woman back out of the ritual circle, and he hopes that’s enough to interrupt whatever it is she’s doing here. Her teenage victim is unconscious in the center of the clearing, dressed in a hospital gown and wrapped in a thin hospital blanket. She’s got ritual markings painted in blood on her forehead and cheeks, and—here’s the best part—she floats three feet off the ground, arms trailing down beside her, like some shitty horror movie special effect.

The witchy woman rounds on him, still keeping up her chanting, but there’s a blaze of anger in her eyes.

“Wow, Morticia,” he says, “so angry. What’s up, did the sale at Hot Topic end early?”

He’s seen quite the parade of villains by now, both in person and in the S.H.I.E.L.D. files, but this one’s new. It’s true, the long black hair and pallor are textbook goth chick, but she’s not actually in velvet and lace and vinyl corsets. Her long robe shimmers and moves strangely, like no fabric he’s ever seen, and he recognizes the hum of real magic in the air. She locks her eyes on him, but doesn’t stop the flow of chanting.

Tony blasts her again, harder, and she shoots back into a tree. That winds her for long enough to break the chant, and behind him Tony hears Steve take the opportunity to run in and scoop up the kidnapped girl.

“Keep her busy, Iron Man,” he calls, hoisting the hostage onto his shoulder and starting to run.

“No sweat, Cap.”

Morticia pushes herself to her feet with surprising dignity for someone whose hair is full of leaves. “You’re too late,” she says. And there’s something about her… it’s like having a tune stuck in your head and not quite being able to remember the name of the song. “You haven’t saved the girl; the ritual will run its course.”

Tony glances quickly over at the charred circle in the center of the clearing, keeping his weapon aimed at her head. “What the hell did you do, Corpse Bride?” It’s hard to tell, but there’s some kind of pattern drawn there, with something dark that’s soaked into the ground. “Tell me!”

“Even if I did, there’s no stopping it.”

“Tony,” comes Bruce over the comm. Alarmed Bruce: never a good sign. “Something’s happening! Now would be a great time to shut this down!”

It’s obvious Tony has no time for banter and games. “How about if I blow your head off your shoulders?” he demands of Morticia. “Will that stop it?”

“You’re welcome to try.” And there it is again, that superior attitude, that single quirked eyebrow…

He fires off a blast, but isn’t surprised when it hits the tree beyond her, and when she speaks again, her voice comes from behind him. Tony whirls to face it.

“For what it’s worth, I am sorry.” The tone is not _quite_ mocking. “You rather forced my hand.”

A babble comes over Tony’s comm, several voices speaking at once: “—won’t stop bleeding—” “—get Iron Man to—” “—pressure on the wound—”  “—stop the ritual—” “—losing her!” He shuts off the comm abruptly.

With a burst from his boot repulsors, he flies into the woman and tackles her before she has the chance to get out of his way. He has her pinned down, his legs astride her and his palm to the side of her face when finally the realization hits.

No, he didn’t take her by surprise, he doesn’t have her at a disadvantage; she let him take her down, is still there only because she wants to be.

“You fucker, Loki,” he says, and Loki smiles condescendingly, like a kindergarten teacher giving her best student a gold star. “This is sick even for you.”

“Is it? I wonder how you think you know that.”

"You stole a coma patient from a hospital.”

“If I’d had few more hours alone with your Dr. Banner, I’d have had all the blood I needed. He would have survived the procedure quite handily. But thanks to your interference I was obliged to improvise with something a bit less potent..”

“Tell me what you did,” he hisses.

She responds with a quick flash of silver twirled between the fingers of one hand, and then the dagger disappears again.

“You’ll find out soon enough. Unless—” she flicks her eyes toward the palm still pressed to her face— “you finish the job.”

When Tony hesitates, a flash of disappointment crosses her face, and then she’s gone.

“She got away,” he tells the others later.

***

Oh, jeez. Is there anyone on his team who can't sucker him in with the puppy dog eyes?

"Fine," he grumps. "Jarvis, override the lockout."

Maybe Natasha, he thinks. Not that she can't do the eyes, just that she wouldn't lower herself. But if she did, empires would crumble.

Steve holds out a piece of pie, like it's an offering, and when Tony ignores him in favor of continuing to swipe at the blue schematics hovering above the table, he places it down ostentatiously near Tony's left elbow.

"You've been down here over four days, Tony."

"Indeed. Four days, seven hours, thirty-two minutes," adds Jarvis.

"Et tu, Jarve?" Tony gestures with his hands as if holding a rapidly inflating balloon, and the schematic expands so he can see the fine details. "I'm onto something here, Cap, about to make my big breakthrough, the culmination of Project Reindeer Games, my eureka moment. You should be glad you didn't walk in on me pruning up in the bath." He pinches one of the tiny parts in the center of the hologram to make it smaller, and reorients another beside it.

"A bath wouldn’t hurt. Nor a little food and sleep."

"Are you kidding me? Food and sleep are, like, my mental kryptonite. I'd have cured old age by now if I didn't have to eat and sleep."

They've had this argument in various permutations enough times now that Cap doesn't argue, just shoves his hands into his pockets and strolls round the workshop like he's taking in a museum exhibit. He stops in front of the ramshackle contraption Tony's been working on and contemplates a tangle of wires entering a hastily carved hole in the casing. "Is this a—no, I can't even pretend to guess what this is."

"It's a _Sufficiently Advanced Particle_ generator." Tony's peering through a magnifier into the guts of a little cell-phone sized device. He picks up a pair of tweezers and lifts a component carefully out. "Could be catchier, I know," he says around the mini screwdriver he has clamped between his teeth.

"What's a—"

"Wouldn't touch that if I were you, Cap."

Steve pulls his hand back as if burned. "What's a Sufficiently Advanced Particle generator?"

"It's a machine that generates Sufficiently Advanced Particles." He snaps a cover onto the back of the little device and wiggles it in the air to show it off. "And this, my dear Capsicle, is a SAP detector. Ready for a demonstration?"

"A sap...? Oh, like S-A-P?"

Tony pulls some safety goggles over his eyes and flicks some switches on the control panel attached to the generator. "Might wanna take a couple steps back."

"That doesn't actually answer the question," says Steve, beating a hasty retreat toward a heavy worktable and hovering like he plans to dive behind it at any second, "of what a Sufficiently Advanced Particle is."

The machine spins up, a few stray sparks crackling off it. Even Tony steps back then, watching it warily like it's a wild animal that he doesn't want to startle. A hum starts to build in the room, the air pressure intensifying, and there's an odd smell that's something like ozone, only sweeter.

"Not sure really, but it's definitely not magic and you can't make me call it that!" He turns a knob on the hand-held device, his face contorting into a thoughtful frown. "It's just science I don't understand yet. And I hope you realize what a privilege you have here, to be an observer at a major breakthrough in human understanding, wherein Tony Stark cracks the mystery of whatever the fuck this—" he waves a hand at the air around the generator, where some weird energy is beginning to coalesce— "is supposed to be."

"You mean to tell me you've been down here for four days making a _machine that creates magical energy_?"

The pressure is building to unbearable levels, and the sparks around the machine are flying thick and fast.

"When you put it like that it sounds crazy. And this is not crazy, it's mad science and that's totally different."

"Sir..."

"Not now, Jarvis!"

"The generator is reaching unstable levels of..."

"Not. Now."

And, inevitably, when the explosion happens, Cap makes a dive for him, and everything powers down for a few seconds before the lights come back on to find Tony a little singed but otherwise intact, and Steve sprawled out next to him where he managed to shove him out of the brunt of the blast.

"Was that..." Steve groans and pushes himself into a sitting position, hand to head. "Was that supposed to happen?"

"It was within expected parameters," says Tony. He's just going to lie here another few seconds, catch his breath. Yeah. That sounds nice.

Steve shakes his head to get through the evasive jargon. "So you've been down here repeatedly blowing yourself up for the past four days? You are taking a break, mister."

Not even the Captain America voice can derail Tony now, though, because he's looking at the readouts on the SAP detector, and— "Holy shit! It worked!"

They assemble the team in the conference room on the common floor. According to Pepper, it was originally supposed to be a formal dining room, whatever that is, but there are now high-tech ergonomic swivel chairs around the giant dining table instead. Clint's playing with the controls on his backrest when Tony and Steve get there.

Thor immediately latches onto the main practical application, the one that Tony had in mind after all when designing the device: "Can this detector be used to find my brother, friend Tony?"

Bruce is fascinated by the science, of course, wants to talk particles and radiation, and might even mention the words _Nobel Prize_ at one point.

Natasha wants to know if Tony's figured out how to neutralize the energy as well as just read it. All he can say to that is that he's working on it. He doesn't mention the detail that the particles he's managed to replicate are pale, unstable shadows of the real thing. They neutralize themselves spectacularly after a few seconds, as his charred shirt-sleeve can attest.

Clint stays silent through the whole discussion, the tension in his jaw muscles belying his carefully neutral expression. Natasha lays a hand on his arm at one point when she thinks nobody's looking, but Tony catches it.

"Just to be clear," he finally says, glaring at Thor, "we are hunting Loki down for punishment and retribution purposes, right? Not to hold his hand and rescue him from the other scary aliens?" For some reason his gaze flicks to Tony as he says this.

Thor places both hands on the table perhaps a little more firmly than necessary and gets to his feet, the better to loom at Clint, when Steve, ever the diplomat, insinuates himself between them.

“All we can do right now is monitor the device, right, Tony?”

“Right. I mean, it works in lab conditions, but…”

He’s actually nearly certain that it’ll work in the field, too, but the thing he’s really fuzzy about is what the hell he plans to do when eventually it goes off.

## Darcy

“You’re sure you know what you’re doing?” Darcy pats her pockets again, making sure she hasn’t forgotten anything, or more to the point, forgotten to leave anything she shouldn’t have on her.

“I learned from the best, remember?” says Kate, her voice giving her away as being equally on edge. “Well, the second best. And he learned from the very best.”

Darcy watches her triple-check the quiver for explosive arrows, flash-bang arrows, smoke arrows, whatever else she’s stocked up for this, and prays they end up needing none of it.

“So you’re the third-hand best spy I know?”

Kate swats her arm. “Don’t worry about me, I know how to tail someone. You should be worrying about yourself. You really don’t want a comm?”

“These guys are the spies spying on the spy agency. You think they can’t detect something like that?” She glances at her watch. “Time to go.”

They hug tightly, and Darcy can feel Kate’s heart pounding as hard as hers is.

“Remember the rendezvous point?”

Kate nods.

“And what to do if—”

“Plans B through F, committed to memory.”

“And no flashy bright purple scooters.”

“Oh my god, _dad_ , if you don’t hurry up and get to your secret spy meeting I’ll kill you myself.”

Darcy grimaces apologetically. She knows Kate’s been at this longer than she has, but worrying about someone else makes her less nervous for what she has to do.

Williams is leaning against the trunk of a black town car, looking more serious than she’s ever known him.

“Lewis.” He nods in greeting, and opens the back door for her to get in. She finds herself in the back seat wedged between him and another guy, who’s maybe in his early fifties with gray hair at his temples. The driver is just a silhouette.

They drive in silence for what feels like a long time, but is probably only thirty or forty minutes, and she’s pretty sure that more than half of that was because of doubling back and winding around to confuse her about where she’s going; even if she’d been more familiar with the city she’s pretty sure she would have been lost after ten minutes. She hopes it didn’t succeed with Kate.

They arrive in an anonymous industrial park, and by now it’s full dark. Darcy suppresses a shiver as she waits for gray-hair guy to go through a whole series of biometric checks at the entrance to a blank-looking warehouse: retinal scans, hand scans, voice verification, the whole shebang.

Inside, it’s like a sci-fi version of the big warehouse at the end of _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ , packed floor to ceiling with sealed crates (only she’s pretty sure these are radiation-proof, high-security, reinforced high-tech whatever, not just some wooden boxes). She notes a loading dock way at the back, with a truck pulled up to it, but she can’t see what they’re unloading. Gray-hair leads, and she marches between Williams and the driver to the back of the building, up some steps, along a steel walkway, and into an office overlooking the warehouse floor. Gray-hair knocks, waits for a muffled invitation, and ushers her in, leaving Williams and the driver outside the door like guards.

The woman seated behind the desk makes them wait while she finishes looking over something on a clipboard. Darcy concentrates on standing there like she’d be comfortable waiting forever if she had to. _Shoulders back, eyes front, don’t lock the knees, hands clasped behind the back, breathe from the diaphragm…_ She takes in the woman’s appearance surreptitiously. Not as old or stuffy as she’d expected for someone in charge: mid-thirties, maybe; long dark hair spiced up with red streaks; librarian glasses; kinda hot. Her bearing, unlike most S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives Darcy’s met so far, is businesslike rather than military.

Whatever under-the-radar op she’s got going on here Darcy’s 99% sure at this point is not officially S.H.I.E.L.D.-sanctioned. But this woman sits here cool as anything, like she’s not committing five kinds of treason.

Finally, the woman hands her clipboard back to the junior agent at her side and dismisses him.

“Technician Lewis,” she says, pinning Darcy with a sharp look.

 _Don’t squirm. It’s not like she can_ actually _read your mind…_

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m given to understand that you are unhappy with the way S.H.I.E.L.D. handles its affairs.”

A trick question? Is she supposed to criticize the agency, or pretend like she’s loyal?

 _Fury has to get his head out of his ass and realize we’re not the only ones in the universe any more,_ was how she put it to Williams, when he was five beers in and she was pretending to keep up with him.

“Any agency seeking to protect human interests has to stay flexible in the face of new threats, ma’am,” she says.

The woman doesn’t smile, but from her nod and the slight softening around her eyes, Darcy figures this was the right answer. The silence draws out. Shit. Seems like she’s supposed to continue.

Um. “Things have changed very quickly for us, ma’am. We can’t be acting like terrorists or even human supervillains are our biggest threat anymore.” She pauses, swallows, lets some emotion creep into her voice. “I personally had more than one friend killed by aliens over the past few years. I need to know we’re doing all we can to prevent that kind of thing.”

She’s not sure that either Thor or Coulson count, since they were both only temporarily dead, and can she even count Coulson as a friend at this point? But scary boss-lady doesn’t need to know about that, and this line worked pretty well on Williams the other night. What would she think if she knew one of the friends who got (temporarily) murdered by aliens was himself an alien? And the brother of the alien who did the murdering? Darcy suppresses a smirk.

"You're very new to the agency,” says scary boss-lady.

“I joined because I thought it was where I could be doing the most to help humans, ma’am.” She lets an unspoken coda to that hang in the air: _But I was wrong._

Boss-lady types something into her laptop and purses her lips at what she sees there.

“I note that you have a personal connection to the alien known as Thor, Lewis,” she says.

“Well, yeah, my former boss is involved with him.” No point denying what’s a matter of public record. “As long as he remembers what side he’s supposed to be on, he’s useful. I just hope we have a way to neutralize him if he forgets.”

A sudden knock interrupts them.

“Come in.”

It’s the driver of the car that brought her over here. Now that Darcy gets a real look at him, she thinks maybe he was on one of the photos she took at the Ohio gas station incident. Boss-lady gestures him over, and he mutters something in her ear, which makes her tense up and get to her feet.

“We have incoming,” she says over Darcy’s shoulder to the gray-haired guy who brought her here. “Get Williams and Lewis out of here, and let us deal with the hostiles. I’m putting you in charge of Item 2. You know where to take it.”

She follows Gray-hair out of the room to where Williams and the driver wait outside.

“What’s going on?” she asks Williams.

He shakes his head, slight creases forming between his eyebrows. “Not sure. Come on, let’s move.” He puts a hand on the small of her back and hurries her along. She’s pretty sure she shouldn’t find that as comforting as she does.

Williams loads a long rectangular case into the trunk of the car and gets in the back seat next to her. Somewhere over by the loading dock there’s shouting and a couple of weird blasts that sound like they could be weapons-fire, but they don’t stick around long enough to find out.

She peers out of the rear window as they peel out of the parking lot, but there’s nothing much to see except a couple of flares of light from somewhere behind the warehouse. They’re still on the outskirts, not much other traffic around, so the driver floors it.

They only make it a few streets away when a blinding light pours into the car from the driver’s side. It’s coming from somewhere up above them and to the left, too high for any of the low-rise industrial buildings around here, but Darcy is on the other side of the vehicle and can’t see what’s what.

Suddenly, the whole driver’s side of the car caves in, slamming Williams into her, and her into the door. Her head makes contact with the glass of the window, and she fights to stay conscious as the whole world turns over once, twice, three times.

The car lands on its wheels and Darcy holds her arms up to protect herself as she slams into the passenger seat in front of her.

“Williams?” She looks over, but she’s blinded by the lights flooding into the car from behind him. “Darren? Say something!”

She puts a hand on his shoulder and yanks it back right away, dark with a slick of gore. His head lolls toward her unnaturally, and a wave of nausea overtakes her. She scrabbles at the door release and at her seatbelt until she falls out onto the pavement.

Her inner monologue is something like _Oh my fucking Jesus god fuck what the shit happened fucking Christ…_ and she just lets that wash over her while her training kicks in and she finds herself crouched behind the vehicle with her weapon drawn. In the front seat, Gray-hair is making some gurgling moaning noise that she thinks she last heard in a zombie movie. The whole scene is bathed in that blinding white light, which is now coming from much closer to the ground.

Footsteps approach the trunk of the car. Voices, too, speaking no language Darcy has ever heard before. She keeps crouched low and risks a peek in the wing mirror. Two shapes, nondescript human clothes… bald, with paper-white faces, strangely flattened features, and either four really flat ears or no ears at all. With the light behind them, it’s hard to tell.

Shit. This is really it. She can take out maybe one or two, but what if there are more back in the… what even is that thing that’s emitting the light? Their vehicle, whatever it is.

Well, they’re going to find her. No way they won’t at least do a cursory check around the car, and if she makes a break for it she’ll be lit up like Christmas. She’s going to take out at least one murdering alien bastard while she has the element of surprise.

Inhale. Glance at the mirror again.

Turn, aim, exhale. Squeeze smoothly…

Alien #1 goes down with two bullets in its chest, just like she was taught.

She rolls toward the front of the car, blasts from the second alien’s energy weapon missing her by inches. It rounds the car toward her and she hears other voices from the direction of the alien vehicle as she unloads more bullets. This time, only one of them hits home, but it takes the momentum out of the alien long enough for her to put one in its skull.

That was her blaze of glory, she realizes, as the other voices ring out, barking orders she doesn’t understand. She’s out of ammo, there’s at least one set of footsteps coming around the car from each direction, and she knows she’s completely boned. She’s going to die on the side of the road in some godforsaken industrial park, as some guy gurgles the last breath of his existence beside her.

Suddenly, a huge explosion blossoms on the other side of the car, and the blinding white light from the alien vehicle is replaced by the orange heat of a fireball. She hunkers down with her arms over her head as the voices cry out in confusion. A familiar _twang_ rings out, then another in quick succession, and the two aliens fall. One clutches a metal rod protruding from its chest, and the other is dead before it hits the ground, an arrow buried in its eye socket. A motor putters to a halt beside her. She opens her eyes to see a boot on the ground, and follows it up to the hand that reaches down to her.

Darcy grabs the hand and hauls herself to her feet, but just as she’s about to join Kate, a sudden thought tugs her back. She ducks her head back into the car, suppressing a dry heave as she roots around in the pocket of the corpse on the back seat.

"What are you doing? Time to go," Kate urges, but Darcy finds her first prize: Williams’s phone, slick with what she hopes is only blood. She dashes to the trunk and pulls out the long black case. Even through all its shielding, she feels a hum of power, but there's no time to think about that. Then, as an afterthought, she pulls Kate's arrows out of the alien bodies.

As she swings her leg over the back of the scooter, the only thing she can think to say is, “I thought I said no flashy purple scooters.”

“You’re welcome,” says Kate, kicking the scooter back into motion. A hundred yards up the road she pauses long enough to loose another explosive arrow, which consumes the car in another billowing cloud of flame.

As they speed away, Darcy clings to her back, knowing that Kate’s too good a friend ever to mention the shuddering sobs she lets out as the adrenaline leaches from her system.


	12. Complicate Your Words

## Darcy

“How long have you been sitting here staring at that thing?” Kate says. She’s been standing, leaning against the bedroom door-jamb for several minutes in silence. There’s no point in Darcy asking her how she managed to let herself in; hanging out with S.H.I.E.L.D.-trained archer/spies for a few years tends to lead to the acquisition of certain skills.

Darcy just looks up from where she sits cross-legged on the bed, hefts the long golden object in one hand, and says nothing. Item 2: it’s lighter than she thought it would be.

“You know what it is, right?”

Darcy twists her mouth into a wry smile. “Pretty sure Erik would kill me if I didn’t.”

“Erik?”

“Dr. Selvig. Jane’s science buddy. Loki hijacked his brain with this when he tried to take over the world that one time.”

There’s a hum of raw power in the scepter; even Darcy can feel it, unattuned as she is to magic. She felt it through the insulated case when she took it from the car, and holding it in her bare hand is like a constant low-level electric shock through her whole nervous system.

When Kate takes it gently from her hand, her head snaps up.

“What—?” Her eyes flare briefly with anger.

“Easy there,” says Kate, holding up her other hand in a gesture of calm. “I think maybe it’s time to put the alien mind-control artifact away, no?”

Deep breath. “Yeah, you’re probably right.” Even though every cell in her body is saying otherwise.

“I can’t help but notice you’re wearing PJs.”

“…Can’t put anything past you, can I?”

There’s Kate’s hand at her elbow, pulling her to her feet. “Come on, up. If you’re going to be my date for this shindig tonight, you have to look the part.”

“I don’t have anything to—”

“That’s why I brought this,” says Kate, picking up a garment bag from where she’s slung it over the back of a chair. Kate puts it in her hand and shoves her toward the bathroom. “Go on.”

Darcy wriggles into the dress. “No way would this fit your skinny ass. Did you buy this for me?”

“Yes, and shut up, I have standards to uphold. Think of it as a favor you’re doing me by wearing it.”

It’s a shimmering gold column, sexy but classy, falling to her shoes in a cascade of silk. Darcy regards herself in the mirror, and runs her hands over her hips, hardly believing her own reflection. “Total red-carpet dress, babe.” She keeps her voice flippant to hide the awe. “If this is what I get on the first date…. Wait, are you expecting me to put out?”

Kate slips an arm through hers and leads her toward the door. “Sorry sweetie, I’m straight.”

“Mm-hmm,” Darcy replies, with a sidelong glance. “I’ve seen the way you look at me; you’re not that straight.”

“Why does everybody keep saying that?”

## Tony

"Sir, Ms. Potts is requesting access to the penthouse."

"Send her in, J."

Unlike most times he gets unexpected visitors, Pepper actually has pretty good timing today. He's just finished up a component for the new armor, and Jarvis took the opportunity to remind him that he hasn't eaten in over 17 hours. Which probably explains the gnawing feeling going on in his stomach. He's sipping on a whiskey, waiting for the microwave to tell him he can eat, when Pepper struts in.

"Looking good today, Pep." And she is, in a mint-green silk dress cut just low enough to be interesting, and her hair twisted up and held in place by what he can only assume is magic. "What's the occasion?"

"What's the—?" She sighs. "Oh, who am I kidding, I can't even pretend to be surprised. The occasion, Tony, which you know because I've reminded you fully thirty times since we booked it, is a benefit for the Fund." That would be the New York Reconstruction Fund, which he set up after the attack, because he's powerless in the face of the puppy-dog eyes of one Steve Rogers. Over three years later, the city still has quite a ways to go before it's back to its old self.

Pepper eyes his greasy work clothes and unkempt hair. "And you're looking a little underdressed." She's herding him into the bathroom and relieving him of his glass.

The microwave beeps, and he gestures at it. "But my—"

"You can eat at the party, Tony." _And drink_ , he thinks, so at least there's that. "Shower. Go."

When he gets out of the shower, he finds a suit laid out on the bed, which he pulls on obediently, but he hesitates over the tie before choosing a different one, and steps out into the living room.

"Do I scrub up okay, Ms. Potts?" he asks.

"Of course you do, Mr. S—" she pauses in the act of picking up her coat and purse, and her expression softens. "Oh, Tony."

Pepper walks over to him to adjust his tie completely unnecessarily. The silk, mint-green tie that matches her dress.

"You look amazing," she says in a completely different tone, blinking back the unshed tears.

He pulls her into an embrace and plants a soft kiss on her forehead, until she pushes him away gently and leads the way to the elevator.

## Darcy

The hardest part of this whole thing, Darcy thinks, is having to remind herself every five minutes that she's here for a purpose. She has a role to play, and much as she wants to just stand next to Kate, nibbling fancy hors d'oeuvres and gawping at the tropical bird display of everyone's clothes, she has to pay attention and make it sound like she has something interesting to say.

Lucky for her, Kate's a pro at this kind of thing; talking endlessly while saying nothing, mingling with senators and celebrities and captains of industry. Darcy's almost fooled by her enthusiasm, but as they turn away from yet another pompous old guy, they share a pained look, and have to rush away so nobody hears the laughter that threatens to burst out.

“What do you think?” says Kate, leaning over so that her breath tickles Darcy’s ear. “More fun than sitting alone in your room fondling your evil scepter, at least?”

Darcy opens her mouth to respond, but then stops, a warning hand on Kate's arm. At Kate's puzzled glance, she tilts her head to indicate a youngish man enduring the conversation of an older couple, barely managing to cover the boredom in his attitude. He's turned away, but his profile looks so very familiar.

"He was at the gas station," she says in a low voice. "I'm pretty sure I have a picture of him zipping up a... bag." _A body bag,_ she doesn't say, but Kate gets it. Actually, if she's remembering right, he seemed to be pretty much in charge of the operation. "I don't suppose you know him?"

"No,” Kate replies, and points to the older couple. “But I know the Hendersons. Friends of the family. Old money."

"One sec," says Darcy before Kate can whisk her over there for another round of introductions. As discreetly as she can manage, she adjusts the bodice of her dress. "There. That should help."

Kate keeps the Hendersons talking, and Darcy arranges herself so that Simon—that's his name, Simon Boynton—gets a good view down her cleavage while they're talking. After a few minutes, though, it's clear that he's not taking the bait. Damn, she's going to have to actually hold up her end of the conversation.

He's cagey about what he actually does with his life (she hesitates to insult him by saying 'for a living'; she's just assuming everyone here is independently wealthy). When he talks politics, he actually seems to know what he's talking about. He's connected, that's apparent. He name-drops people Darcy's actually heard of.

And then a shadow falls across them. Simon looks up, a mix of emotions on his face. Irritation and... resignation? Something like that.

"Hi, dad."

"Simon." He nods at his son brusquely. When he turns to Darcy, his demeanor changes altogether, and she finds herself the focus of his not inconsiderable charm. "Who's your friend, here?"

There’s something familiar about his face, though she can’t place it right away.

"Dad, I'd like to introduce Darcy Lewis, a friend of the Bishops. Miss Lewis, my father, Senator Clifford Boynton." The stress on the word _father_ is eloquent on the subject of resentment.

_Senator_ Boynton? The guy who came in kind of late and threw his hat in the ring for the presidential primary— _that_ Senator Boynton? Darcy swallows, she hopes unobtrusively, and lets him take her hand. He shakes it, clasped in both of his, and he has this way of looking at someone like they’re the only person in the room. It’s a little… intense.

"Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Lewis. I hope my son here is... entertaining you?"

Something clicks for Darcy, and suddenly she knows how to handle these two. "Very much so, Senator! He's been a perfect gentleman." She shoots a coquettish glance at Simon, and then looks away as if trying to cover.

The Senator gets a knowing, indulgent look, crinkles his face with approval, and says, "Well then, I'll leave you two to it, shall I?"

She keeps up the smile as he leaves, but honestly it's a relief not to be the focus of that intensity any more. Simon looks miserable and isn't even trying to hide it. Good; that means she can talk about what just happened, use it to get in with him. She drops the coquetry and turns back to Simon with a more relaxed, neutral attitude.

"I guess he's like that a lot?" she says.

"Like what." He's vibrating with tension, doesn't bother to make it sound like a question.

"Trying to set you up with women." Slight emphasis on _women_.

He sighs, but relaxes at last. "Yeah. Sorry you had to be subjected to that."

"I've had worse things happen, trust me. But what about you? I don't have to stick around if this is awkward..."

She's about 99% sure that his reply is going to be—

"No, I've been enjoying our conversation."

Sweet! She's in, and she isn't even going to have to sleep with this guy. Not that it’d be a chore, exactly; it's hard to tell through the suit jacket, but it looks like he works out.

"Well how about we grab a drink and a couple of those comfy-looking chairs?" She takes his arm. Yeah, definitely works out. "And on the way, we can let your pops get an eyeful of you with some arm-candy of the female persuasion."

He laughs, and lets her lead him away.

## Tony

The whole way to the fundraiser, Pepper’s all business. The guest list; the bigwigs who will donate the most, and who he therefore needs to schmooze with; the status of the Fund's current projects.

Tony’s on autopilot through most of the event, snagging glass after glass of champagne from the trays of passing wait staff, and mouthing Pepper's words at the appropriate people, filtered through the usual Stark snark. These events are much more bearable since the Avengers, though, because it means there's someone with a brain around to distract him while Pepper is busy doing whatever it is she does at these things. This time, because it's a Fund benefit, the other Avenger presence is Steve, and even if Tony doesn't get to hang with him, he at least takes some of the pressure off, because Steve apparently loves chatting endlessly about New York to anyone who'll listen. Tony watches him bounce from group to group for a while, and his enthusiasm is kind of adorable, but eventually Tony decides it's time for some air.

He manages to track down the glass of scotch he's been wishing for all night, and strolls onto an empty balcony, planning to lean on the stone balustrade and look out over the city. Before he can get there, however, he hears a voice off to his left, wry and tinged with amusement.

"Hello, Stark." It’s not _exactly_ the voice he would have expected, but the accent’s there, and the tone and attitude are 100% Loki.

Tony gives himself a whole bunch of points for managing not to jump out of his skin, instead turning smoothly to face the voice's owner.

"We really must stop meeting like this," says Tony, swirling the amber liquid in his glass.

Loki prowls a couple of steps toward him, into the light that spills out of the hotel. A familiar smirk is painted across his face. "Oh, but wouldn't that be a shame?"

He's wearing a form Tony hasn’t seen before—male, mid-thirties, slightly shorter and more rugged than his normal appearance, more James Bond than Severus Snape—and he's dressed for the occasion, his dark suit immaculate. Tony resists the impulse to ask him who his tailor is.

Instead, he says, "You know, if you're interested in donating, there's a whole lot of stuff that still needs reconstruction."

"Is that so."

"It occurs to me that, of all the bullshit events I get dragged to in a month, this is pretty much the most tactless one for you to show up at."

The smirk just grows wider, and Tony feels some actual, genuine anger bubbling up.

"What do you want?"

"Want, Stark? You wound me." Loki places one long-fingered hand over where his heart would be if he weren't a heartless bastard. "Perhaps I simply wish to speak with my friend Tony."

"Oh, you have friends now?" Tony spits back, and he'll be damned if he lets the momentary hurt that crosses Loki's face cause him any guilt. God of lies, remember? Pity will only cause him to lower his guard.

Loki purses his lips, considering the face of the billionaire in front of him. “It seems as though there is something _you_ wish to discuss, however.”

Damn his perceptiveness. After a long, considering pause, Tony drains his glass, and the anger ebbs along with the liquid. If he were honest with himself, he'd admit he's been wishing to see the god again. There are questions that need answers, and, more than that, there are the memories of a few days when he almost felt like Loki wanted to be real with him. Well, real plus random shapeshifting and drunken make-out shenanigans. That's probably as real as Loki gets.

He takes a deep breath and spills what’s on his mind. "I keep having these... dreams. Some of them, they're my dreams, ones I've had for years, about... well, the details aren't important. They're about stuff that really happened, only now, you're in them."

Oh jeez, this is awkward. _I've been dreeeeeaming about you, Loki._ Way to sound like a schoolgirl with a crush. But is the truth any better? _Hey, crazy powerful god-alien, I've been killing you over and over every night in my sleep._

Loki's just looking at him with one raised eyebrow and an expression of cool disinterest that's so controlled it has to be fake. He's getting totally the wrong impression. Tony licks his lips, mouth suddenly dry under the intensity of that gaze. He's not even sure anymore if it would be the wrong impression. In every form, Loki has a feline grace, an animal heat, that Tony is starting to find irresistible. Couple that with the way he sometimes looks at Tony as if he can’t decide whether to eat him or, well, eat him…

He shakes his head to clear it. Drunk, that's all. And he has important things to quiz the guy about. Dreams and whatnot.

"And then there are these other dreams. They feel just as real, but they're not events that ever happened to me. Falling through the stars, things trying to claw their way into my brain. You're in those, too. Are they yours?" He notes Loki's shudder. Well, that confirms that, then.

Loki paces over and leans his elbows on the balustrade, looking out over the city. Tony perches on the edge of a table to study his profile, wondering if he's surveying the devastation he caused, or if he's just wrapped up inside his own head.

At length, he replies, his voice muted as if coming from far away. "I too have had similar dreams. The cave, the water; those are yours."

Tony lets his silence answer for him.

"A most curious connection..." Loki says, as if to himself.

"So you're not causing it, then? Only, I've been doing my research, and you can travel through dreams, right?" This is nuts. He imagines himself four years ago—hell, four months ago—being told he'd one day be discussing dream-walking with zero irony. He'd have laughed at himself. He _is_ laughing at himself.

"Why would I inflict upon myself the horrors of your petty mortal mind?" Loki sounds weary, though, not as if he's really trying to strike home with that barb. "As you've seen, I have horrors enough of my own."

“Those Cthulhu things,” Tony says abruptly. “They’re real? And you’ve seen them?”

“Stark—”

“Cos, honestly, if that’s what’s going on inside your head, it’s no wonder you flipped out.”

“I did not ‘flip’—”

“I’m tired of sharing your brain, Rudolph. Can you make them stop?”

“I could kill you now and put you out of our misery.”

Well, and if that doesn’t raise another burning question: “Why would you want to do that when you went to all that trouble to save my ass?”

“A debt repaid, nothing more.”

“No, I don’t think so. I think it’s personal. You kidnapped my best friend; all your bullshit about needing his blood or not, that was designed to get under my skin. You followed me on vacation. You won’t fight the other Avengers, only me, but you never actually try that hard to kill me. And now, here you are at my fundraiser, I can only assume for the pleasure of my company.”

“You flatter yourself greatly.”

“Not feeling all that flattered.” He pushes off the table and advances on Loki. “You keep trying so damn hard to get my attention.”

In that moment it doesn't seem weird that instead of drawing up to his full height and shoving him away, Loki pulls back, leaning on his elbows on the stone so Tony looms over him.

“Well, now you have it.” He grabs Loki’s jaw tightly and tilts his head up so he can’t look away. “So talk.”

They’re locked eye to eye, breathing hard, anger surging through his veins. Anger, and… another primal emotion, way less welcome in this scenario. He's suddenly hyper aware that he's up in Loki's personal space, conscious of every detail of his physical presence. He can feel the pulse flutter in Loki’s jaw, Loki’s breath ghosting across the back of his hand.

Oh, shit, he's done it now. The crazy alien god-prince is going to see this as an unforgiveable slight, and here Tony is without even his bracelets to call his armor. Loki's going to crush him in one fist, he's going to rip his head off with his bare hands, he's going to—

He's going to snake his fingers up to twine around Tony's. He's going to slide both their hands down around his own long, pale throat, and _squeeze_ , tight enough that the skin under Tony's fingertips blooms purple. A regular human would be bruised for days. And Loki... Loki arches up into the touch, pressing their bodies together, maintaining that intense eye contact the entire time, his breath hitching in a way that has nothing to do with any lack of air.

Tony flashes on a memory. Before the fall of glittering shards, before the rush of wind in his ears and the panic in his chest, there was the hand at his throat, and the velvet-and-gravel voice:

_You will all fall before me._

"Is that what you want, Tony Stark?"

Oh shit, did he say that aloud?

"You want me to fall before you?" He manages to infuse it with a level of suggestiveness that even Tony would be hard pressed to imitate.

Tony can't think over the sound of his pulse pounding in his ears. The other sounds—the string quartet inside, the murmur of conversation, the traffic below—fade out, leaving just him, and Loki, their faces mere inches apart. He shouldn’t accept this invitation, no matter how much he wants to, but he feels his resolve crumbling.

And then, it's too late. With a soft flutter, Loki vanishes, leaving Tony to stumble forward and catch himself awkwardly on the balustrade.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Stark. I didn't know you were out here." The voice is deferential, probably someone from the catering staff sneaking off for a smoke break.

Tony doesn't turn around, doesn't know what would show on his face right now, so he just nods and tries to keep his voice steady.

"Yeah, just getting some air. I'll be back inside in a minute."

The door closes quietly behind him, leaving him alone with the nighttime sounds of the city humming many stories below. He groans, and leans forward, hanging his head between his arms where they're braced on the stone.

"You are so fucked up in the head," he murmurs, and he has no idea whether he's talking to Loki, or to himself.


	13. Break Me in Two Like a Lifeline

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we all read the "Consensual, but not safe or sane" tag, right? There is smut in this chapter, and it's pretty violent and messed up, with no negotiations about boundaries or safewords. I've put specific warnings in the end notes, but they're kind of spoilery.

## Tony

Tony struggles awake to answer the blaring alarm, wondering at first why his neck hurts like a motherfucker, only to realize he’s fallen asleep on his workbench again.

“Jarvis. Jarv. J! What the hell?”

“Your S.A.P. detector, sir.”

“Fairly certain I didn’t give it an alarm loud enough to wake the dead.”

“I took the liberty of sounding the workshop alarm, sir, since I knew that you would wish not to miss it.”

Tony winces. He’s not hung over, really, just tired, having fallen asleep sometime after sunrise, but even in his current fog he can’t argue with that. There’s blessed silence when Jarvis shuts off the alarm. Well—almost silence, since the intermittent beep of the detector continues.

"Okay, where's the signal coming from?"

"I am unable to determine that.”

Fine. What’s the point in designing an AI almost as smart as himself if he still has to do all this grunt-work? He sighs, and picks up the detector, but has to retract some of his mental tirade against Jarvis when he sees that there’re a couple of cups’ worth already brewed in the coffee maker.

“Friend Tony! I have been informed of the developments. Could it be that my brother has returned?” Thor, the only other member of the team currently in the tower, barges into the workshop buzzing with nervous energy. There are worse people to have along on this Loki-hunting mission.

“We’ll see, big guy. I don’t exactly have a whole lot of magic subjects to test this on, so I don’t know how different their signatures are, but this one looks pretty close to the readings I’ve gotten from Loki. It’s confused, though, like there’re more than one signature.” He twists dials and turns around bodily to point the device in different directions. "It's faint," he says. "I haven't been able to test the max range yet, but I can get an idea of bearing and distance. It's... that way." He gestures vaguely southwest. "More than two miles, less than ten? Something like that."

“Then we must leave immediately! I would not miss this opportunity.”

Neither would Tony, since waiting around can only get more people involved—S.H.I.E.L.D., Clint… you know, non-understanding parties.

By the time they get there, the detector is going nuts, enough to make Tony sincerely wish he'd installed a volume control on the thing. When they see the flashes of green light emanating from the roof of a parking garage, he figures that's enough of a clue to where they're going, and yanks the battery out with a sigh of relief.

He hovers, not sure he wants to put himself in the middle of what he's seeing. Tony's eyes are drawn to a crumpled shape on the ground: the unmoving body of a man dressed in bloody Asgardian clothing. Above him stands an all-too-familiar figure, spinning a staff that turns out to be the source of about half the green magic blasts—now he’s close enough, he can see that in addition to Loki’s magic, every clone he’s made is getting bombarded with poison-green spells fired by a tall, curvy woman with almost more blonde hair than clothing. The hugest man he's ever seen (even counting Thor) is swinging an ax as big as a person, but so far the real Loki’s managing to be somewhere else every time.

"Brother!" cries Thor, but Tony grabs his wrist before he can fly in.

"Nuh-uh, big guy. Seems to me they can fight it out between themselves."

"I cannot stand by and let my brother be injured!"

One of the several Lokis on the rooftop appears behind the other magic-user and throws a dagger at her head, which she only just manages to deflect in time with a wave of her hand.

"Looks like he's doing okay to me."

"Nay, Amora is wily, and Loki outnumbered. I know her tricks of old, and she must not be permitted to run loose on Midgard. The consequences can only be disastrous."

"You sure she's the one who shouldn't be allowed to run loose?" Tony says, but Thor's already taking off. "Sonuva—"

Tony dives down after him.

Thor throws Mjolnir to intercept a swing of that giant ax just before it connects with one of the Lokis, and follows by plowing into the huge man who swung it. They roll together toward the other edge of the roof, standing up to trade more blows. Tony aims his repulsors at the strange mage—Amora, was it?—but he's way less stealthy than Loki and she hears him well in time to put up a shield to repel them. And, shit, now he's got her attention.

"What's this? A mortal? You dare to stand in my way?" She stalks toward him, a mix of amusement, disbelief, and rage playing across her face.

"I dare a lot of things, Barbie. Now, how's about you pack up your little magic show and run along back to your dream house. This is my planet and I don't want you breaking stuff here."

“Ah, but the thing I wish to break is not of this world.” She lifts a hand, magic coiling around it.

The tendrils snake out to wrap around and around him. He fires his boot repulsors, trying to get airborne before she can trap him, but she’s too fast. The coils clamp his arms to his sides and drag him back down to the rooftop.

“And you can fly,” Amora continues. “I wonder, is this the solution to my little mystery? If I’m not mistaken, you are the one who aided Loki in fleeing the attack in the desert. Why are you so keen to aid the butcher of New York?”

Tony grits his teeth, refusing to give her the satisfaction of an answer.

The squeeze comes abruptly and forcefully, and his armor lasts only seconds in the face of it before starting, very slowly, to crumple. Pressure builds around his chest until he's gasping for breath, and she lifts him to dangle helplessly a few inches above the ground.

He struggles to twist his wrist enough to aim a palm repulsor at her, and fires, breaking her concentration long enough for her snake of magic to blink out of existence. He lands heavily and stumbles down to one knee.

Meanwhile, he's keeping half an eye out for the other mage, who, predictably, is nowhere to be seen. He doesn't feel a weird pang that he's having to trade taunts with the enchantress when he could be bantering with Loki. And, no, he absolutely does not resent that the god of mischief has no doubt taken this opportunity to bail instead of going another few rounds with him. He wants less of Loki's attention, remember, not more.

Enough of that. Focus. Evil Barbie walking—no, sashaying—toward him, eyes locked on his even though he knows she can't see through the mask.

"It doesn't have to be this way," she says seductively, touching the tips of her fingers to the chin of his helmet and lifting his head. "You could have a more fitting Asgardian ally, if you so desired."

Tony slows in the act of raising one palm to face her. He knows he’s supposed to be doing something, but can't quite remember what. She's so... beautiful... and fascinating.... He could drink in that loveliness for days. He would do anything to please her.

Suddenly, a spasm of pain contorts her face, and the sparks of magic in her hand blink out like a lightbulb on the fritz. Loki shimmers into view, sliding a small dagger out from between her ribs to wipe it clean on her clothes. One arm holding her upright, he snakes the other around her to release a leather sheath from where it's fastened at her waist.

"I'll be taking this, thank you," he says, and the sheath disappears somewhere in his clothes.

Tony blinks, his head beginning to clear, but still dazed and unable to do much except watch as Loki with a gesture tears what can only be described as a rip in the fabric of reality. The edge ripples and shimmers, framing a view of a blasted wasteland that is definitely not on Earth.

"Pleasant though it's been to see you once again, Amora, I will feel much more comfortable knowing that you are... safe... in another realm. Midgard is so full of peril; why, you have already been so very careless as to get yourself stabbed." With a chilling grin, he gives Amora a shove so that she staggers through the portal. As the tear heals, Tony sees her beginning to crumple to the ground on the other side.

As soon as she's gone, Loki strides over to the body on the ground. Tony only now notices that it's not actually a corpse; the Aesir is struggling in a smear of his own gore, trying desperately to crawl away as Loki approaches. The mage slides one boot under his stomach and flips him over effortlessly, to regard him like a bug as he lies gasping on his back.

"Galinn," says Loki, arms folded, contempt painting his features. "Did you really believe Amora would uphold whatever... agreement... she made with you? How readily she allowed you to fall to my blade. A mere distraction."

Galinn musters enough energy to spit on Loki's boot. "You... murdered... my son," he says hoarsely.

"A Jotun intruder murdered your son."

"You let it in. You Jotun… you're all the same... you monst—"

It's almost too fast to see. Loki grabs him by the front of his shirt with one hand and has him dangling off the edge of the roof, hands clawing at Loki's wrist, and feet scrabbling to gain purchase on the parapet.

"Go home, Galinn," he growls, "and be grateful for the mercy I have shown you this day."

One decisive motion sends the unfortunate man hurtling with a strangled scream toward the street below.

"Mercy?" says Tony, struggling at last to his feet. "I think you need a new dictionary."

Loki looks up as if seeing Tony for the first time, and snorts with amusement. "Galinn and Amora are Aesir, not some fragile little mortals. It was very considerate of you to provide a distraction for me, however." He inclines his head in a mocking bow.

"How's about you repay that favor by telling me what the hell's going on here?"

Loki glances over at where Thor is still facing off against ax-guy. "Perhaps another time."

"Oh, no you don't," says Tony, lunging at him as he turns to do that teleport thing again. He manages to grab onto Loki's shoulder just in time to regret it. There's a nauseating lurch as he is _pulled_ in what feels like every direction at once, and a rush of images that remind him unsettlingly of his nightmares of the void, voices chittering at the edges of his mind.

When they arrive at... wherever it is that they arrive… Loki's already managed to squirm out of his grip, so he staggers and catches himself on the closest thing, which is the back of a—what is that? Is that a chaise lounge? It looks squishy and comfy and, most importantly, horizontal.... Maybe he'll just sit down for a moment. He's thrown up in his helmet before and really does not want to repeat the experience.

Before his ass touches the seat, Loki rounds on him, bristling like a cat that doesn't want to be picked up. He catches his arm and hauls him to his feet.

"Get out," he hisses.

"I... just gimme a..." He pops up the faceplate of his helmet and leans over to brace his hands on his knees. Oxygen. That sounds like a good idea.

"I said, get. Out."

Tony gulps a lungful of air and takes in his surroundings. It's somewhere between a private library and a sitting room, windowless and doorless. The dark wooden furniture could plausibly be from any antique store in New England, but the low, warm lighting is provided by no source that he can see.

He surreptitiously activates an emergency beacon that alerts Jarvis in case he's unable to communicate for some reason, and is not even slightly surprised when there's no response. Wherever he is, it's either shielded, or outside Jarvis' range—which would mean not on Earth.

"Just one little problem with that, Sabrina: how?"

Loki gives an exaggerated sigh and starts to reach out toward him. "I suppose I must take you."

"Nuh-uh," says Tony, snatching his arm out of reach and taking a step back. "First off, I am so not ready to do that again, possibly ever. And second, you owe me the rest of our chat."

The sorcerer regards him with a level gaze for several seconds.

"Fine."

"Fine?" Wow, he didn't actually expect that. He has so many questions he hardly knows which one to put first.

Before he's gotten over that astonishment, there's a glow around Loki, and his battle armor dissolves into something almost casual in comparison—a high-collared green tunic and black leather pants. What is it with these Asgardians and their leather pants?

"Slipping into something a little more comfortable?" Tony jokes.

"I am forced to endure your conversation; I don't see any reason to make this even more unpleasant for myself." That was said with something resembling humor, and Loki's... he's actually pouring a dark red liquid from a decanter into two glasses. "I suggest you do likewise."

Tony hesitates. Now he's not being dropped and flung and yanked through spacetime, he's very aware of the pressure from his dented suit around his chest. It would be refreshing to be able to take a real breath sometime soon. On the other hand... he glances with a not inconsiderable amount of wariness at the being who just threw a man off a roof.

Who can somehow pull off sipping from a cut crystal glass and smirking simultaneously, and still make it look elegant.

"Ask yourself whether it really makes a difference if either of us is armed. You leave this place alive, or not, at my whim."

"That is not even slightly reassuring." Still, he sees the truth in it and starts flipping manual releases, piling the twisted metal carefully. The armor is too damaged to fold itself up.

He takes the glass Loki hands him and sips cautiously, surprised to find that it’s a very fine vintage of port.

They stand facing one another in uncomfortable silence. This is the first time since the Battle of New York that he's managed to get a good look at Loki in his own shape, and his brain chooses this moment to note things like how Loki's hair is longer, a smooth cascade down between his shoulder blades. Has he even cut it since then? Things like his long, expressive hands, his graceful gestures… No, cut that thread right there. He wanted to be alone with Loki for a reason, and ogling him is not it.

"Why do you keep messing with me?" Okay, that came out a bit more blunt and confrontational than he intended. "I thought..." What had he thought? "I thought we had an understanding. Or, you know, the start of one. Then ever since the gas station it's back to murder, mayhem, and grand theft artifact. And running away before I can even ask what the hell. It’s time for some answers."

"You are a singular mortal, Stark, to make demands of me,” Loki says, taking a step closer. “You purport to have an excessively high opinion of yourself, and yet you exhibit such recklessness as to betray a darker impulse." He breathes his next words in a whisper. "One might almost imagine that it thrills you to flirt with death."

"Are you sure it's me we're talking about here, Merlin?” Tony replies gently. “Which one of us was it who chose to lie there bleeding out, pretending he didn't have the mojo to fix it?"

"You know nothing of magic," says Loki, but not before Tony notices a slight flinch.

Interesting. If Loki really didn't want to have this conversation, Tony would be long gone. Or possibly disemboweled; one of those. He just wants the plausible deniability of having Tony coax it out of him.

So, history's most unsettling cry for help, then? Or—

Suddenly there's a silver flash between Loki's fingers, and Tony's heart leaps into his chest when he sees the dagger, certain he's pushed things too far. Dimly, he notices the leather sheath in Loki’s other hand; this must have been what he was fighting Amora for. Tony wonders how she managed to steal it from him, but he doesn’t have time to get into that right now, what with the god being close enough to slip the blade between Tony’s ribs in a blink. But he just turns it over in his hands contemplatively before holding it out, handle first.

Wondering what the trick is here, Tony allows Loki to place it in his hand. As soon as it touches his skin, a sensation of power winds its way up his arm, ending in his chest as a throbbing hum that resonates uncomfortably with the arc reactor.

"This is what you took from the museum?" He can't imagine anyone touching _this_ and deciding to put it casually on display. Yet, somehow, he's not handing it back.

"More or less."

"What does that mean?"

"I have renewed its original power."

Right. When the museum owned it, its voodoo batteries were empty; they must not have known what they had on their hands. And Loki’s been running around gathering the stuff to juice the thing up again. Tony recalls the blood ritual in the forest, and shudders.

"And what power was that?"

"The power to kill any being." Loki closes the remaining space between them and wraps Tony's hand around the hilt, holding his gaze intently. " _Any_ being."

And finally, it clicks, and it feels like all the air has been sucked from the room.

"No," he whispers.

"No?" There’s a dangerous glint in Loki’s eye.

"You're asking me to kill you, in cold blood, and my answer is no."

"Why, Stark, I thought you would leap at this opportunity. Your mortal enemy, offering himself to you. It could all… be over.”

Tony shuffles backward, the backs of his legs colliding with the chaise. “Don’t drag me into this. You want it to be over, man up and take care of it yourself.”

“You think I haven’t tried? When the Bifrost was broken, I…” he trails off, unable to continue.

“Thor said that you fell,” Tony prompts.

"Of course he did.” Loki's smirk does not touch his eyes. “Thor always lacked the stomach for difficult truths. I let go, Stark, allowed myself to drop into the void between worlds, believing it would be my end." 

Tony knows it, though he’s never been there. The void without end, an emptiness that is almost palpable. _Things_ slithering just outside his awareness, trying to snake their tendrils into his mind. The desperation that must drive someone to let themselves fall into that on purpose. He gives an involuntary shiver, and he knows that it doesn't go unnoticed.

Loki takes a deep breath, as if his memories cause him pain. Tony reminds himself that this is the god of lies, that vulnerability is just another manipulation, but Loki's intensity compels him.

“I do not know how long I drifted in that nightmare. Perhaps I am still there, and everything that came after is just another torment of my own imagining. Those who took me from that place found delight in unmaking me each day, only to piece me back together into something more biddable. No matter what I did, they kept me alive to use me; later, the Aesir kept me alive to see me humbled.”

“How many times…?”

“Have I died? Or tried to die?” He looks away at last. “Too many to count.”

“Loki…” Tony approaches him, reaches out a hand, but Loki flinches away.

"I once asked a seer to tell me of my destiny,” he says, seemingly out of nowhere. Tony frowns at the non-sequitur, but goes with it. “In all futures, it was the same. In all futures, I brought nothing but death and ruin.” And then he’s back up in Tony’s personal space again, one hand gripping the front of his shirt. “You… you infuriating mortal. You brag of defying the fates! This is the greatest chance you’ll ever have to prove your mastery over them!” 

"I said no, Loki,” he replies, willing himself to keep his arms by his sides, willing himself not to fight back. He realizes he still has the evil dagger of evil gripped in his right hand. "I regret so many things. Heir to the empire, caring more about progress and profit than the lives I’ve ruined—that's the fate I'm defying here. Sure, if you come up with some new crazy scheme to rule the world, I'll be there with my team to stop you, but I won’t let you make a murderer of me again."

It happens between one heartbeat and the next. He finds himself slammed against the wall, winded, and somehow Loki’s got the dagger pressed against his throat.

“You will not deny me this,” he hisses.

Tony’s heart pounds as his mind helpfully supplies images of the silvered scar he sees in the mirror each morning, of his body on grainy security footage slumping into a pool of blood. Every sensation is intensified, from the prick of the blade against the tender skin to the taut muscle of the arm pressed across his chest. He struggles against the crush of Loki’s body, grabbing and twisting. Later, he won’t be able to say what exactly he did, only that it ends with Loki’s gasp of surprise and a bright slash of blood above the god’s collarbone.

Loki touches two fingers to the cut, as if shocked that a mere mortal managed to draw blood, as if that’s not exactly what he just demanded, and looks at the red slick that covers them, breathing heavily, his expression unreadable.

This is the moment it becomes real to Tony. He’s going to die here, and nobody will ever know what happened. He hopes Loki’s too angry to draw it out.

But instead of eviscerating him where he stands, Loki presses those blood-slicked fingers to Tony’s lips. There’s heat in his eyes: lust, and rage, and whole layers of emotions Tony hasn’t even begun to fathom, and Tony feels his heart pounding now for other reasons as well as fear. Holding that gaze, he allows his lips to part, tastes the metallic tang with his tongue, laps the blood from the fingers. Loki draws a shuddering breath, which Tony translates as encouragement, and so he takes the fingers into his mouth and sucks, groaning a little at the intrusion, at the press and heat of the body against his.

Next thing he knows, he’s crashing into a bookcase, courtesy of a vicious backhand blow to the face. Loki strides over, hauls him to his feet. Tony touches his lower lip, and now it’s his fingers that come away shining red. He knows he should be terrified, that he is entirely at the mercy of someone who is known for having none. But, god help him, his body has its own ideas about how to react to the thrill of danger, and if he’s going to die here today, he might at least make it worth his while.

He’s the one who closes the distance, crushing their lips together hungrily, desperately. Loki returns the kiss, hard enough to bruise, one arm tight around his waist, the other tangling brutally in his hair. Tony slides his hands under the tunic, up along the muscles of Loki’s back, feeling the barely restrained power there. Loki’s yanking on his hair, tipping his head back to invade his mouth, and Tony’s tugging and pulling at the laces of the tunic. They break away from one another, panting, just far enough to pull the garment over Loki’s head.

Tony moves in to continue the kiss, but is stopped by a shove to the chest, and next thing he knows he’s sitting on the ground, leaning back on his hands, with Loki naked to the waist and straddling him. He grinds his hips up, just to feel that—oh, yeah—Loki’s enjoying this just as much as he is.

Now the god is twirling the silver dagger in one hand, and the blade glints viciously as Loki presses the tip of it to his own skin and traces a fine red trail across his taut stomach, holding Tony’s gaze the entire time, an invitation in his eyes.

Tony reaches up and grasps the hilt, tentatively at first, and then more decisively when Loki uncurls his own fingers from around it. He draws the point from Loki’s shoulder to his sternum, following the curve of the muscle, perilously close to his heart. It requires almost no pressure to part the flesh slightly, and the blade is so sharp that it takes a few moments for the blood to begin to well up. Loki’s head is thrown back, and he exhales a groan between gritted teeth.

“I really could kill you with this,” Tony murmurs, and it’s not a threat, just an expression of awe.

“I could kill you whenever I choose.”

“And will you?”

Loki leans down and captures his mouth again for a few breathless seconds, the knife trapped between them and gleaming dangerously, murmurs, “I don’t know yet,” against his lips.

That sends a jolt of desire right to his groin, and he bends his head to run his tongue along the cut—his cut, the cut that he made, which stands out vividly now that Loki’s allowed his other scars to heal, marring that perfect flesh. The sounds Loki makes as he lingers there are all the encouragement he needs.

There’s cool air on his chest, and he realizes that Loki is using the ancient blood-magic enchanted dagger to _cut him out of his clothes_ , which startles a laugh out of him even as the shreds of his under-suit fall away.

He’s running his hands over the muscles of Loki’s back, moving down to cup that sculpted ass, when with a growl Loki captures his wrists and yanks them behind his back, holding them there with one hand. Tony tries not to whimper as teeth scrape down his neck, to close on the meat of his shoulder. Loki crushes him tightly to his chest, clever mouth keeping him so thoroughly distracted that it’s a shock when he’s shoved flat on his back and Loki sinks down onto his cock. He gasps, and fingers tighten on his hips as he bucks upward involuntarily.

Loki rides him unforgivingly into the floor, and just as he is building toward release he feels those long fingers snaking around his throat, squeezing just hard enough that he sees little starbursts as his vision closes in, and this time when he remembers the freefall he can only remember the exhilaration of the uncertainty at whether these moments will be his last. It’s enough to send him over the edge, whiting out completely for a moment. Loki follows, fingers still tight around his neck, and for a moment it occurs to Tony to wonder whether the crazy god plans to let go… and also to wonder whether he cares.

He’s still swimming between waking and unconsciousness when Loki rolls off him, sated and breathless, to flop onto the ground beside him.

Now that the rush is over, delayed panic sets in. This was the worst—second worst—idea he’s had. All week. Maybe all month. Pepper is going to kill him. Cap is going to kill him. Agent is going to dismember him and make sure the parts are never found.

Probably it would’ve been easier if Loki really had brought him here to beat them all to the punch.

He lies there, blinking dazedly and trying to get his breathing under control, and wonders what, exactly, Loki did bring him here for. Because, and he’s very clear on this now, there’s no way he would’ve ended up here if it wasn’t what Loki wanted.

Tony props himself up on his side, eyes raking over the lean body stretched out beside him, and reaches out tentatively. When his hand isn’t wrenched off at the wrist, he runs his fingers over the slashes in Loki’s flesh. They are already beginning to close, the blood long since stopped flowing.

“I must return you to your Avengers soon,” says Loki, but he seems in no hurry to do so, lying on his back with one limp arm flung over his eyes.

“Yeah. They probably think I’m dead in a ditch somewhere.”

“I wouldn’t leave you in a ditch.”

“A ritual altar, then?” Tony suggests darkly, remembering the scene in the woods.

Loki snorts. “Blood magic requires a certain purity.”

“As in virgins?”

“As in more blood than alcohol in your veins.”

Tony swats him half-heartedly. “Guess I should come up with some kind of story about what happened to me today.” He isn’t sure _he_ knows what happened, beyond the mechanics. “You are one confusing reindeer, you know?”

“Chaos is in my nature.”

Tony shakes his head. “You could’ve asked anyone to… do what you asked. Someone who—” _actually dislikes you._ He’s not sure what prompts him to suggest it; he doesn’t really want Loki to die, it shocks him to realize.

“Most would likely hand me back to the Mad Titan and claim their bounty. Besides,” he says, turning his head to look at Tony, “it would be more… satisfying… to have you do it.”

That’s probably fucked up, right? But Tony says, “Aww, Bambi, that’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me,” and it’s only halfway because he’s appeasing the mentally unstable god he just fucked.

And Loki mumbles something about _foolish mortals_ , but the note in his voice is almost fond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for sex involving death threats, deathwishes, punching, cutting, bloodplay, choking, breathplay.


	14. Together We Can Take the World Apart

## Darcy

It’s been a while since Darcy was at the tower. Tony assigned Jane a lab there, but she still spends most of her time in New Mexico for reasons of light pollution. Plus she acts weird about the money aspect, because apparently accepting unlimited S.H.I.E.L.D. funding is different from taking advantage of Mr. Stark’s generosity. If Darcy visits too often, her new spy buddies are going to start questioning her loyalty, whereas if she doesn’t visit often enough, Thor’s going to put on that pouty sad face, and say…

“Lady Darcy, I must confess my disappointment that your moving to New York City did not increase the frequency of your visits.”

“Sorry, big guy. Life at S.H.I.E.L.D. keeps me pretty busy.” Well, it’s not a lie. Then she studies his face more closely and realizes his gloomy mood is way out of proportion. “Wait, did something happen?”

“It is my broth—Loki.”

That sets her on edge. Before she realizes it, she’s pulled her hands from her hoodie pocket, switching to a combat-ready stance, and is memorizing the layout of the room. It even occurs to her to wish that she had her firearm.

Thor’s eyes widen. Oh right, guess he hasn’t seen much of the new improved Darcy.

“Fear not,” he says, holding out a reassuring hand but very definitely not touching her. “He is not here. Indeed, if he were, I might have less cause for concern.”

She forces herself to relax. “What’s he done now?”

“He has kidnapped my brother-in-arms, the Man of Iron.”

“What, really? I thought they were BFFs now.”

“I had hoped that my brother was recovering from his madness, but Loki… remains Loki.”

She follows him into the lounge on the communal floor, where Agent Romanov is on a conference call with a couple of agents (one of them Coulson, it sounds like), Clint is crouched backwards on a chair with his arms resting on the chair back, flicking through the news channels, and Dr. Banner follows Cap out of the elevator.

“Nothing in the workshop,” Cap reports.

“Tony only made one tracker, and he, uh, has it. I have Jarvis scanning for unusual energy spikes, but the tech in that device was a prototype.”

“Anything, Widow?”

The agent shakes her head.

“Hawkeye?”

“CNN are on about how much Wikipedia weighs. Local news has a rescue dog that saved its owner from a fire. If there’s mayhem, they don’t know about it yet.”

“Wow,” says Darcy. “Everybody’s here, huh?” She hadn’t anticipated the whole team, had in fact been trying to avoid Agent Romanov; the woman is like a human lie detector, and Darcy might be good, but she’s not that good.

“Someone goes missing, we all pitch in,” says Clint, pausing on Nickleodeon for a couple of seconds.

“Guess I dropped by at the worst time. I can—” Darcy gestures to the door.

“Nay, Lady Darcy. I welcome your company while we wait.” Thor sits on the couch with exaggerated care. He’s never quite gotten a handle on how flimsy Midgardian furniture can be.

“…Sure,” she relents. “Maybe when we have to go rescue Tony my awesome new ninja skills will come in handy. I know six ways to kill someone with a sock.”

Clint doesn’t look away from the screen, keeps flicking through channels. “Nat knows thirty-five.”

“Yeah, well, junior agent here.”

She plunks herself down next to Thor and pats his arm awkwardly. “Maybe Loki just needs a backgammon partner. And anyway, Tony’s tough, he can—hey wait, back up!”

Clint casts a weird look at her wild gesturing, but goes back to the previous channel anyway, even turns up the sound a few notches.

_“Our special guest this evening is Senator Clifford Boynton,”_ the pretty dark-haired host is saying, as Simon’s dad sits on a couch beside her, smiling a practiced smile.

The host continues speaking over footage of a press conference. _“Since his announcement earlier this year, the Senator has garnered huge support for his Presidential bid.”_

The press conference sound fades in on Senator Boynton’s speech.

_“…to announce my intention to run for President of the United States. This great nation has borne the brunt of hostile alien incursions over recent years, and is currently lacking the kind of strong leadership required to address…”_

Senator Boynton is good at this. He has the required gravitas and steel in his voice, and certainly looks Presidential. Behind him and a little to the side, there’s a helmet-haired woman in a conservatively cut navy-blue dress, and two people around Darcy’s age. Simon is wearing what probably looks to most people like a proud smile, but Darcy’s spent some time around him since the fundraiser, and can see right through that fixed expression. She’s never seen Simon’s sister before, but she looks like a softer, less stressed-out version of Simon.

Captain Steve is nodding along to the bits about patriotism, which sound completely boilerplate to Darcy. She rolls her eyes, careful not to let him see, because who wants to upset such a fine slab of all-American beefcake? Onscreen, the Senator is going through the usual motions, showing off his charm, talking up his great family and his glowing war record, before the interviewer starts getting into the real juicy questions.

_“Much of your platform deals with homeworld security, which is going to be a pretty big issue in this upcoming election. Some critics accuse you of opportunism—what do you say to them?”_

_“Well, Trish, I’ve been a Senator here in New York for the better part of two decades. I’ve lived most of my life here. I saw the effects of the Battle of New York personally, lost some valued friends, even volunteered a little with the clean-up. If I’d been on the fence before about my political aspirations, this galvanized me. I couldn’t sit on my hands any longer, not when I know I could be doing something to shore up our defenses in the face of this new threat. If that’s opportunism, well, I guess I’m guilty as charged.”_

The audience laughs obligingly. Darcy has to hand it to him; he knows how to talk the everyman talk. But she’s sure there’s something sinister underneath.

_“You’re known for having a broad anti-alien stance. What about the aliens that have helped us so far?”_

_“I’m sure they’ve been well-meaning, but let’s face it, if Earth hadn’t gotten dragged into alien affairs, we wouldn’t have needed their help. And, I know this is a controversial opinion, but I have to speak my mind on this: we don’t know where their loyalties lie. I’m not saying we refuse their help, but we have to ask ourselves what they want in return, and we certainly shouldn’t be giving them free rein of our classified information.”_

Cap makes an unhappy grunt. Seems like his respect for this guy is evaporating quickly, and Darcy can’t blame him. She carefully doesn’t look at Thor.

_“Some say that mutant heroes are our greatest home-grown resource against these threats, but you’re on record as being opposed to groups like the X-Men.”_

_“I describe my stance as pro-human. That goes for mutants and aliens both. As long as mutants are making every effort to integrate into human society, working under human direction, I have no concerns. Of course, we should limit their access to sensitive information and technology, limit the power they wield over ordinary Americans, but I see no reason why they can’t play their role. On the other hand, groups like the X-Men are only one step away from being dangerous separatists like the Brotherhood of—”_

Clint, as always, is not subtle. “Why’d you want to listen to this crap?” he gripes, muting the TV in disgust, and flicking over to another channel.

“I met Senator Boynton one time,” Darcy explains, as neutrally as she can. “Wanted to know a bit more about him.”

Thor’s got a face like thunder—literally, knowing him. “This Senator Boynton is a fool,” he says. “He does not know what forces exist beyond Midgard, nor how ill-equipped you mortals are to handle them alone.”

“He’s an idiot if he doubts Thor’s loyalty after all he’s done for this planet.” That’s Cap, of course, loyal to a fault himself.

“I’m sure he didn’t mean you, big guy,” she says, patting Thor on the arm. “Nobody could take a look at those manly abs and refuse your help.”

Actually, Darcy’s sure that Thor is exactly who he meant, but she tries to be reassuring anyway. Meanwhile, she’s having a minor panic attack. This is bringing it home to her just how far out of her depth she is. It’s not just disgruntled agents who are unhappy with the way S.H.I.E.L.D. have been handling alien contact; if Simon Boynton is involved in the infiltration, surely Senator Slimy is as well. In fact, given Simon’s distinct lack of enthusiasm for alien-bashing last time they spoke, dad’s probably the one pushing him into it. Use contacts to get Boynton Junior fast-tracked up the agent ranks, and there’s your man on the inside. Simon probably has a higher clearance than his dad at this point.

“Excuse me, Captain Rogers,” cuts in Jarvis, and boy is Darcy ever grateful for the change of topic, “but sir would like me to inform you that he has returned.”

Everyone’s on their feet in an instant, Romanov closing the conference call over the protests of the agents on the other end.

“Where?”

“In his workshop, Captain.”

Normally she’d enjoy an elevator ride with this many hot superheroes (even Dr. Banner is cute in a shy professor kind of way), but she’s too stressed to appreciate the experience. Plus, she’s trying to keep quiet so they forget she’s there and don’t kick her out.

Tony has his back to them, taking off the last couple pieces of his armor, when they come in. Darcy doesn’t miss how it’s piled sort of behind a bench and out of sight. That, plus the way he’s taking it off by hand instead of having the robot things do it, makes her think it’s so beat up he doesn’t want them to see it. Rather than his usual under-suit, he’s wearing a button-down shirt, a little too long in the sleeves.

“Hey guys,” he says cheerily, turning part way around but keeping one side of his face hidden. “Wow, the gang really is all here. Hope you weren’t waiting up for me!”

“Tony…” Cap can inflect that word just like Pepper sometimes. Darcy wonders if he learned it on purpose.

He still won’t quite look at them.

“Tony.” Cap folds his arms over his chest. He doesn’t try and manhandle Tony, just stands there looking disapproving and disappointed.

With a sigh, Tony turns to face them. Jesus, he’s a mess. The entire right half of his face is purpling and swollen, he has a split lip, there are what look like fingerprint bruises around his throat, and he’s very obviously trying not to hold his ribs.

“You should see the other guy?” he offers with a weak smile, and can’t quite disguise that it hurts to do so.

“Medical. Now.”

“See, now, why you gotta go and be so predictable, o Captain, my Captain? I don’t need Medical for a few little bruises.”

“How about one big bruise? Because that’s what you look like,” says Clint.

“You might have cracked ribs or internal bleeding.” Romanov sounds like she could be discussing the weather.

“Can’t Bruce check it out after I have a shower? I promise I’ll go to Medical if anything’s broken.”

There’s sort of a collective sigh, and Darcy can tell Tony’s won. For now.

Clint’s playing with an arrow, twirling it between his fingers, and god only knows where he had that hidden but it’s a thing he does when he’s stressing about something. “How did you get away?”

“Loki sent me back after I appealed to his better nature—no, not really, sorry,” he says to Thor’s momentary expression of wild hope. “We went a few rounds. I got the feeling he was playing with me like a cat with a mouse, but he never really planned to kill me. I think he eventually got bored or something.”

Darcy guesses that basically does constitute BFFs in Loki’s world.

“Debrief later. Shower now.” Tony’s already heading to the bathroom at the back of the workshop.

The Avengers are all preoccupied, so it’s easy enough to hang back out of sight as they leave.

## Tony

Tony emerges from his shower to find Darcy sitting on a bench, swinging her legs and playing with a Rubik’s cube.

His first impulse when he sees her is to gripe—actually, his very first impulse is to pull his shirt on more hurriedly so she doesn’t get an eyeful of the mottled mess that is his torso—but she grins at him first.

“Oh, hey. J was just telling me you can always solve this in twenty moves or less.”

“Jarvis was telling you that?”

“Well, you know. We were chatting. I told him I used to have one of these as a kid, but the only way I could solve it was by peeling all the stickers off. He was trying to give me pointers but I got lost when he started talking about algorithms.”

“You were chatting with my AI?”

“Problem?”

“No, it’s just…” It’s just that most people don’t do that. Most people think of Jarvis as a glorified encyclopedia/delivery service/messaging system. “No problem.” He smiles to avoid giving her the impression she’s in trouble, and regrets it when the muscles in the right half of his face protest.

Now that the adrenaline and endorphins have worn off, he can feel every twinge. He’s exhausted, and hungry, and was planning to hide down here alone for a bit and play the incredible mental film reel of this afternoon a few times.

He has to shake the images because Darcy’s talking again and putting something on the table in front of him. A plate, with a sandwich on it.

“Sorry, just ham and cheese. Yours is the only fridge I’ve ever seen that doesn’t have more condiments than food in it.”

“You’re a mind-reader. Where did you even get this?”

She gestures to the mini-fridge. Oh yeah, Steve stocks that every now and then. Maybe if he kept beer in it Tony might remember its existence, but usually he’s got a bottle of something stronger on hand.

Speaking of…

He pours out two glasses of bourbon. Doesn’t really go with the sandwich, but he’s not complaining.

“So…” she says, fidgeting nervously for some reason.

He swallows a big mouthful of food. “So?”

“I’m probably the last person you want to see, and I’ll understand if you just want me to leave, but just let me say something first.”

He frowns. Why would he be mad at Darcy? Apart from because she’s alone in his workshop without permission, but Jarvis would’ve called him if she’d done anything weird.

“I’m really sorry. I feel like all of this is my fault, and I never meant for you to get dragged in, and I thought it was over but apparently not. So… sorry.”

"Help me out here. What did you do?”

“I made you babysit Loki. And now it’s been months and apparently he still has a grudge against you.”

That startles a laugh out of him; he’d almost forgotten how all this began. And, oh yeah, he’s supposed to be resentful of Loki’s attention.

“Babe, if you have power over the god of chaos, I’d love to hear your secrets.” Boy, would he. That provokes some imagery that he really doesn’t need at this exact moment, so he hides his reaction with a gulp of bourbon. “Otherwise, stop guilt-tripping yourself for the actions of a crazy man. Crazy being. Whatever.”

Has she really been carrying that around since March? Damn. He’s not good at reassurances, so he tops up her glass and hopes it translates.

Something tickles at the back of his mind. Seems like he’s heard tales of Darcy lately for some reason. Oh, yeah…

“I hear you joined S.H.I.E.L.D.” He tries really hard not to sound wary.

“Yeah. Guess I have you to thank for that, actually.”

“Me? How d’you figure?”

“I got into the whole agenting business when you went missing. The other time you went missing, I mean.” Then, she smiles up at the ceiling. “Jarvis deserves like a third of the credit though.”

“You’ve been agenting behind my back, Jarvis?”

“Indeed, sir. Ms. Lewis brought me her evidence and asked for my conclusions. It was thanks to her that Ms. Potts was able to be the first on the scene in Ohio.”

“She asked you for your opinion?” He looks at Darcy appraisingly.

“Ms. Lewis asks for my opinions on many things. I’m afraid I can be of minimal assistance with regard to the selection of nail polish, however.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Jarv! Even Jane said it rocked, and she’s like totally immune to the froofier things in life.” She’s gotten hold of a pot of yogurt (from his fridge? Why would they be in his fridge? Who around here even eats those?), and is alternately scooping it into her mouth and gesturing with the spoon.

Tony relaxes a little. She treats Jarvis like a person, defers to his best judgment. Jarvis likes her. More important, Jarvis _trusts_ her. She’s still S.H.I.E.L.D., but that’s not all she is.

She tilts her head and narrows her eyes, and asks him through a mouthful of yogurt, “So how come you don’t trust S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

That’s just uncanny. Is it something in the water they give these agents? Normally it’s only Natasha who can pull that shit. Darcy doesn’t have the whole _femme fatale_ thing going on, but somehow it’s just as scary coming from a grad student in a ratty hoodie who’s kicking her converse-clad feet like a kid on a swing. Moreso, perhaps.

“They ruined the paint job on my armor.” Which is a nice way of saying ‘tried to murder me.’

“Hmm.” And now she’s looking at him as if deciding whether _she_ can trust _him_. She pulls out her phone and fires off a quick message.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, just asking… uh, my associate… to email J some stuff. Thought you might be interested.”

As it turns out, he is. His hands tremble as he swipes through image after image. That dark stain on the asphalt, that’s a congealing pool of his blood. Much more of it than he’d imagined. There are burned-out gas pumps and the husk of a Volkswagen. Uniformed corpses, a couple of them charred beyond recognition, being zipped into S.H.I.E.L.D. body bags. Somehow looking at it as a crime scene is more unsettling than watching the action movie version on the security footage.

“These aren’t on the S.H.I.E.L.D. servers. Where did you get them?”

“I took them.” Totally casual, no big. Another spoonful of yogurt.

"The report said there was nothing left. The fireball ate the evidence.”

Darcy shrugs.

The next image draws him up short. “That… isn’t human.” Swipe, swipe. There’s only one image of it, and that only shows the merest glimpse, a hand flopping out of a bag before it gets zipped up. “S.H.I.E.L.D. covered this up. And you’re showing me, why?”

“You know what that is?”

“Not a clue.” He drums his fingers absently on his arc reactor. “Some alien that’s chasing Loki. Doesn’t look Chitauri or Asgardian. Bounty hunter maybe?”

Her eyes narrow, like she’s putting some pieces together. “I, uh, OK, so this is classified or whatever, but I ran into a bounty hunter one time. Not one of these guys, an 80s alien rocker chick. She was chasing some small-timers, but she said something about bigger fish to fry. Think maybe Loki’s a bigger fish?”

“Well, his old boss was pissed at him for fucking up his invasion of Earth.”

Tap, tap of the spoon on the lips, thinking. “Hey, let me run a thing by you. Imagine you’re a petty, terrified little human who just realized aliens exist. And you’ve got loads of money and resources. And the biggest, scariest alien dude out there is promising to reward whoever brings him Loki’s head on a platter… what would you do?”

His stomach drops. “I’d try and make a deal. He gets his chew-toy, he agrees to ignore us.”

“Yuh-huh.”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. have been communicating with the Mad Titan.” This is so much worse than he thought. “There’s no way he’ll hold up his end of the deal. They’re basically handing him the keys.”

“It’s not all of S.H.I.E.L.D. Most of them are just normal agent-style crazy. I don’t know which ones are which yet, except I think Senator Clifford Boynton is behind it.”

He blinks. “You… are infiltrating a group… that is infiltrating S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

“Yuh-huh.”

“If we get out of this alive, Agent Lewis, you are coming to work for me.”

She laughs. “I want two floors of the tower.”

“One floor.”

“One floor and a scooter.”

“Done. Remind me never to let you hang out with Pepper.”

“Too late,” she grins at him as she heads for the elevator. Then pauses, turns back. “Oh, and… one more thing. I don’t know what Loki’s up to or why you’re covering for him, but I’ll keep it to myself.” The ‘ _for now’_ lingers unspoken in the silence as the elevator doors close.

He watches her leave, sipping his bourbon contemplatively. If today hadn’t already been so massively fucked up, he might be asking himself why her veiled threat was kind of hot.

***

After Bruce signs off on him (bruised ribs, not cracked; no internal bleeding), he goes to bed and for the most part does not dream.

When he finally does, sometime around dawn, it’s death he sees, but not the death of his nightmares.

_He walks the cool stone hallways, between pillars so tall they vanish into darkness above. The dead stand guard in silence, or share smiles that hint of secrets lost in time, or pass him oblivious, in quiet contemplation._

_On the throne sits a woman, terrible and beautiful, pale with raven hair and green eyes. Her spare form is barely covered by the drape of green fabric, but the only feelings stirred in him are ones of awe. He kneels at her feet, and she places one hand gently on his head, and he is at peace._

When he wakes, he slips one hand under the pillow and is not surprised that his fingers close around a warm, engraved hilt. He stands on his private balcony turning the silver dagger over in his hands and watching the sun come up.


	15. Never Dream, Never Win

## Darcy

She flops onto her back to stare at the blank ceiling, convincing herself to resist the urge to tiptoe over and push the closet door shut. Three weeks of this, nearly. Three weeks of things slithering behind her eyeballs in the dark. Three weeks of the sensation of never being alone in this room. Three weeks of something scratching at her brain to be let in.

With a gasp, she sits up in bed. _Three weeks_. It started the night Williams died. At first she thought it was just psycho-trauma-yadda-yadda, something to do with seeing her teammate die horribly right next to her. But another thought has just occurred, and if it makes more sense it is no less horrifying.

She flicks on the bedside lamp and reaches under the bed, pulling out the artifact. She lays it across her lap on the comforter and gingerly unwraps it from the towel. She’s not stupid; she remembers her reaction when Kate took it out of her hands that time, and she has no intention of going full Gollum here. So rather than touching the scepter directly, she holds her hand a few inches above it, moving closer until she feels the pads of her fingers tingle with energy.

Even that is close enough to hear it whispering directly into her brain. It’s not exactly words, more like flashes of images and ideas she knows didn’t come from her. Weird magic sci-fi shit like whole colonies built on barren rocks floating through space, no atmosphere, no sun, no plants, just a buzzing hive of aliens making preparations for war. Or a cube that glows blue-white, pulsing with cosmic energy (not that she knows what cosmic energy is, just that when she sees the cube, that’s the name that comes to mind); enough energy to wipe out planets. Or worse, and weirdest of all, a lady Grim Reaper—black robes, skeletal face and all—whose eternal hunger she can feel, an emptiness that can never be filled, no matter how many galaxies of souls she feeds it.

She yanks her hand back, away from the scepter, hurries to throw on her shoes, and a hoodie over her pajamas. It’s an hour till dawn, cold, and drizzling, but she’ll spend it walking the shining streets until the sun comes up, shoulders hunched up and hoodie pulled tight around her. Anything to be out of that room.

Hell, it’s New York. Nobody notices a crazy person.

The visions are real, she decides. This is just a fact, not her being down on herself, but she's not going to pretend she has that much imagination. Plus, until she started meeting aliens and gods she had basically no interest in all that sci-fi stuff, so no way are these hallucinations pulled from her brain. She’s seeing something that’s happening far away in the vastness of the universe. Something out there is preparing for war. It’s relentless, and it’s unstoppable, and it’s coming for Earth.

***

Of course it’s that day, bleary and stupid from lack of sleep, that Darcy gets the message that the sick knot of dread in her stomach has been expecting. She’s with Chang on base, sprawled in the drably institutional little room they call the lounge and rigorously avoiding paperwork, when it happens.

“Haven’t seen much of you lately, Monica,” she says, watching her team-mate ignore the book she’s holding in favor of the much more exciting hobby of staring off into space.

Chang’s frown doesn’t change. “Only every day,” she says.

“Yeah, at work. You missed our poker night—”

“Williams’s poker night.”

“Oh. Right. Yeah.”

Silence for a while.

“I just mean, maybe we should try and make the new guy feel welcome. Not his fault what happened to Williams.”

“Oh yeah,” Chang challenges her, “and what’s that? Died in the line of duty, my ass. We weren’t even on duty that night. Will it always be like this? People die and they tell us nothing. When I die, will my mom ever know why?”

Darcy tries not to squirm. She can’t avoid talking about Williams completely, but she hates this, lying to someone she actually respects. When she signed herself up for this whole project, she didn’t kid herself that it was going to be all James Bond spy games (well, maybe a little), but she definitely didn’t think about the part where she would grow to like and care about people at S.H.I.E.L.D. She’s considered bringing Chang into the loop with her and Kate, but Chang knew Williams pretty well, and Darcy’s not sure whether to trust her.

Chang goes on. “Not saying I need to see Williams’s corpse or anything, just…”

 _And you never will,_ thinks Darcy. Even if there’d been enough left to fill a body bag after Kate’s arrows took care of things (she’d ‘borrowed’ some of Clint’s best explosive arrows, the ones Tony spent four months tweaking), Hand would never let any of that mess see the light of day.

She met Agent Hand again—that’s the name of the woman she’d been thinking of as ‘scary boss lady’—the day after everything went down. The worst thing she could do right now, she knew, was avoid her new contacts. If she really were a keen new recruit to the cause, what would she do? She sent a text to the anonymous number Williams gave her: _Sorry I couldn’t make it to lunch. Reschedule?_ It meant, more or less, in the code he’d given her, _Awaiting instruction. Please notify of time and place._ After that, more besuited goons, another confusing car ride to a mystery location, and Hand’s sour face looking at her as if she had one chance to talk her way out of a body bag of her own.

Darcy learned far too young that the best way to sell a lie is not to make it too polished. Don’t tell a coherent story from beginning to end; let yourself get sidetracked from the main point; stick like glue to the basic facts but act confused about peripheral details.

The persona she’s playing here is ‘basically competent, yet perhaps a little naïve’, so she made her report in a voice that trembled just enough to make it seem like she was trying to control it.

There were two alien craft. She saw three—no, four—figures get out of one and move toward the car. She thought she saw the trunk open, like maybe they were using it as a shield in the firefight. The driver discharged his weapon at the alien who had fired at him. Or, wait, maybe the driver fired first. Either way, he hit one of the alien craft, and there were aliens running, and Darcy dived out of the car to avoid the fireball as the second craft took off. She was very detailed about what it was like lying awkwardly in a ditch and hoping that none of the attackers saw her. Eventually, Hand cut her off, seemingly satisfied for now.

What she absolutely did not do is give a coherent and specific explanation for what happened to Item 2, or even hint that she knew anything about what was in the trunk. She didn’t come up with a story about seeing an alien get into a craft with it and escape, just claimed that everything was blurry and confusing, and let Hand draw her own conclusions. Spies enjoy drawing their own clever conclusions way more than they like being fed stories by junior agents.

The fact that she walked out of there alive tells her that Kate’s scorched earth policy did its job. But she’s spent every day since then looking over her shoulder in case something finally catches up to her, thinking of all the potential clues she might have missed, stuff that might put the lie to her story: arrowheads, scooter tracks, bullet casings that match her firearm…

So when the lounge door swings open in the middle of her awkward chat with Chang, and Simon pokes his head around the corner with a carefully neutral expression painted on, she knows it’s verdict time.

“Lewis,” he says. “Got a minute?”

“Uh… sure?”

“My office in ten.”

She nods, her mouth dry. Couldn’t talk even if she wanted to, for once.

As soon as he disappears, Chang looks at her, eyes bright with delight and scandal.

“Simon Boynton? You’ve been playing that one close to your chest!”

Darcy laughs, aiming for embarrassed in that way that means you actually want to be teased about something. Doesn’t hurt if she encourages this idea of a crush (unrequited or otherwise). So she tells the truth with her words, and lets her tone do the lying for her: “He’s just a friend. Not even that, really. We’ve had coffee a couple of times.”

“Uh-huh,” says Chang. “Well you better not keep your ‘friend’ waiting…”

She only hopes that all this scheming and role-playing will still be relevant in ten minutes, and that she’s not walking to her own funeral.

Lost in these thoughts, she nearly runs into Simon where he’s waiting around the corner. He jerks his head to indicate that she should follow him, and walks briskly. They’re distinctly not going in the direction of his office, and she notes he’s in suit pants and a shirt, not his uniform.

He makes small-talk as they go, not the cocktail party kind of small-talk she’s seen him do before, but the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent equivalent, which consists of enthusing about a new type of ammo that field agents are going to start getting assigned, and complaining that the Thursday special in the mess has been changed from tacos to meat loaf. He seems relaxed, and though she doesn’t know him that well, she’s pretty sure that he’s not the kind of guy who could be this casual in the face of sending his friendly acquaintance to their death or entorturement.

When, without a word of explanation, he hands her a small duffle bag she hadn’t noticed he was carrying, and minute or two later stops near the restroom and says, “Go ahead. I’ll wait for you here,” even though she hadn’t said she needed to go, she is further reassured, if a little weirded out.

She locks herself in a stall and examines the contents of the bag. What is it with these rich people and picking out clothes for her? Simon’s taste is as good as Kate’s, if a little less flashy. The black pants are simple enough, but have that air of being expensive. She’s not sure how she can tell; perhaps she’ll have to wear a bunch more expensive clothes to find out. The top is a burgundy red, with a cowl neck that drapes low enough to show off the assets that she knows for certain Simon is not interested in. So what’s the deal here?

He doesn’t give her any hints in the car, or indeed until they are seated near the back of a little jazz bar being served appetizers.

“Hand’s assigned me as your new contact,” he tells her.

Ah, that explains things. The location is perfect for not being overheard, with intimate little tables and the noise of the band to baffle even the most powerful directional mics. Disguising it as a date makes sense; S.H.I.E.L.D. has no policy against fraternizing outside your chain of command (and they’re pretty much don’t-ask-don’t-tell about fraternizing within it).

“This makes, what, our third fake date now? People will start to talk.”

“I’d consider that a personal favor,” says Simon with a lopsided smile. “My dad’s been on my case a bit less since I met you. He’s replaced some of the ‘get a girlfriend’ nagging with the ‘when are you going to bring her over?’ nagging, but I’d say I’m down 10% nagging overall.”

Darcy tries to imagine the meet-the-parents routine when one of those parents is a senator, and squirms at the thought. Doubly so when she realizes she’d be getting all the awkward parts of a relationship without any of the fun parts.

“My new contact, huh. What does that even entail? I didn’t exactly have much to do with my last one before…”

Before he met his agonizing death in a car wreck. She thinks of reaching out, begging Williams not to be dead, of the feel of the blood, slick on his skin. She was okay talking around this subject with Chang earlier, but Simon knows some of what really happened, knows she was there, and that makes it more real again. If it’d been a legit S.H.I.E.L.D. op, she’d have been sent to a shrink by now. She’s not sure if she’s glad or sorry that didn’t happen.

Crap, she should probably be talking. Has she been sitting here with her eyes closed? Can he tell that her breathing is messed up?

He leans over and lays a hand on her arm. “It’s okay,” he says. “That would have been a rough night for anyone. I was sort of amazed you were so willing to jump back in.”

She smiles wanly. “I figured I’m in now, whether I like it or not.”

That was intended as a joke. One of those gallows-humor jokes that’s more truth than fiction, but he was supposed to laugh. Instead, a shadow passes across his face. Misery tinged with fear. So he’s not the good little soldier in Hand’s creepy spy army? Maybe even wants out, and can’t figure out how to accomplish that. Very interesting; she files that away for later.

She likes Simon. This is even harder than liking Chang—at least she’s only a regular S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, not involved in the group Darcy set out to stop. The thought of bringing Simon down with the others is less thrilling the more she gets to know him, so it comes as something of a relief to realize he’s not exactly filled with enthusiasm and loyalty to the cause. Perhaps if she got him to defect… He must be pretty high up in whatever organizational structure they have. Aside from anything else, he’d be a valuable asset.

That reminds her of something else. “So I guess I got a promotion, then, if I went from taking orders from Williams to taking them from you.” She smiles.

“We’re all taking orders, Agent Lewis,” he says grimly.

“From Hand?” she asks, because she knows that’s what she’s supposed to believe, though she has an idea of who the real boss might be.

He shakes his head. “Even she’s taking orders from—someone.”

Darcy suppresses a sigh. He really is the worst spy ever; perhaps she should try and get him to join her team poker game sometime and score some M&Ms off him. Still, his lack of guile is good for her right now, even if it’s bad for his health in the long run, given his choice of career. Although, come to think of it, maybe it wasn’t so much of a choice. Like everything else in his life so far, she’s starting to think. If she’s going to get him out of this, she should hurry up and do it before he gets himself killed.

“Speaking of which,” he says, reaching into his inside jacket pocket, “I have your first orders right here.” He pulls out a little gift-wrapped box, which makes her give him a sidelong glance. A fake third date is a bit soon for a little gift-wrapped box.

It cracks her shit up when she pulls off the paper to find an iPod nano. Definitely less suspicious-looking than a flash drive or a wad of paper, but seriously, someone from S.H.I.E.L.D. giving her an iPod—it’s too much to handle.

"Aww, you made me a mix-tape,” she jokes.

“Destroy it when you’ve memorized the information. I’m talking smashed, burned, whatever. Don’t just overwrite the data with music.”

“Yeah, I know. Data retrieval and stuff. But I’m disappointed—doesn’t it self-destruct after twenty seconds or something?”

Simon smiles, but it’s a bit half-hearted. She suddenly finds herself wanting to make things okay for him, to see a real smile on his face. He’s too sweet of a guy to waste his life dancing to his daddy’s tune, especially when that tune is kind of ugly and has lyrics about hating aliens… yeah, this metaphor’s getting away from her a bit.

Maybe she can get Simon out of the evil anti-S.H.I.E.L.D. before she takes them down.

## Tony

Tony spends the next few weeks wondering when (or if) he’ll see Loki again. He upgrades his suit sensors for SAP detection, and they catch a few bad guys—and one time, Stephen Strange, who is so indignant that even Fury's eye glints with amusement while dressing them down for it—but it gets harder and harder for Tony to fake satisfaction at the success of his gadget.

He tells himself it's probably for the best if Loki doesn’t show his face on Earth. Best for the Earth, best for him. For starters, while Loki hasn’t gone out of his way to kill people in the months since the gas station incident, it’s not like he’s avoided it either. The S.H.I.E.L.D. psychiatrists on duty after the blood ritual had to see psychiatrists of their own. Loki is an unrepentant murderer, who has not exactly sworn to keep Tony off his murder list.

He keeps the dagger in his nightstand drawer while he’s trying to grab some sleep, and has it on him the rest of the time. Because it shouldn’t just be left lying around, he tells himself, and not because he wants Loki to have to come to him for it when he wants it back. Besides, who knows when he might be called upon to kill an immortal being? That doesn't really explain why he hasn't mentioned it to the rest of the team, though. It still hums with unsettling energy, but he gets used to it, and if he keeps it wrapped up and doesn't touch it with his bare skin, it's muted almost to nothing.

Pepper thinks he's doing better because he's not picking up so many supermodels and celebutantes; he can't tell her that the thrill of that seems hollow in comparison to what he’s chasing now.

He has no more dreams of the peaceful hallways, nor of Loki, just his old PTSD nightmares, but at least they're not so frequent as they were before. Now he knows their dreams were connected, he almost misses the Loki nightmares. What does it mean that they've stopped? Perhaps Loki got his wish after all. He should be glad about that. Everybody wins, right?

***

Natasha in full interrogation mode is a joy to watch. She’s a virtuoso at her chosen art, coaxing exactly the desired note out of her subject every time. Which is why it’s almost disappointing that this alien is singing its (his?) entire tune at the slightest prompting.

“No harm intended, I promise! Just our target, and then we leave. In fact, just let us go and we’ll leave now!”

Black Widow leans menacingly over the table.

“Please,” the alien whimpers, cringing away from the bracelets that fire her Widow’s Bites. “No more shocking!”

When Widow turns away the irritation is evident on her face even from the high angle of the security camera.

The tiny shake of her head is mirrored by Clint, who is standing next to Tony and scooping actual popcorn from a bowl to his mouth. He frowns at the popcorn, as if it’s the snack’s fault that he didn’t get his show, and drops the bowl onto the table unceremoniously.

“The evidence we recovered corroborates their story,” says Agent as he walks in the door and tosses a weird-looking alien tablet on the table. “This makes the fourth set of alien bounty hunters we’ve arrested in the past six months.”

“Is that an alien ‘wanted’ poster?” asks Clint, picking up the tablet. “Cool.”

It is indeed an alien ‘wanted’ poster, or at least there’s an ominous, if illegible, word displayed above the image of a face, and Tony’s heart sinks as he sees the familiar green eyes, sharp cheekbones, and vicious snarl.

“What I want to know is, why are we stopping ET here?” Clint says through a mouthful of salty snack. “We let him go, he gets his guy, they are never seen on this planet again. Everybody wins.”

“Everybody except Loki,” Tony mutters, not quite low enough, judging by the sharp looks he catches from both agents in the room.

He draws himself up defensively.

“I know how S.H.I.E.L.D. likes to do things, but this is at least halfway an Avengers op, and Avengers don’t do the torture thing.”

“Who’s talking about torture?”

“Oh, sure, whoever made the poster of doom there has nothing but good intentions. He wants to give Loki back that book he borrowed four years ago and keeps forgetting about.”

"Look, I know Loki’s the Brad to your Angelina or whatever, but you ever think maybe the _god of lies_ is _manipulating you_?”

Tony squares off in front of Clint, who holds the bowl protectively between them and continues scooping up popcorn with a challenging smirk on his face.

“Pretty sure since Afghanistan I’d think torture was a shitty thing to do either way,” he says, and normally he’s the last one to bring up that whole subject but whatever helps him score points in this pissing match is suddenly fair game.

Even Clint knows better than to touch that one with a ten-foot pole. “I don’t give a shit what poster-guy plans, anyway. Aliens fighting aliens, none of our business.”

“Never took you for an alien racist, Barton.”

“Nothing against aliens in general, just one in particular. He’s done nothing to earn our help; pretty much the opposite actually.” Clint looks pointedly over Tony’s shoulder at Coulson.

Tony knows if he turned and looked at Agent right now, he’d see the usual assessing calm. Clint’s bearing far more of a grudge about his former handler’s near-death experience than Agent himself ever has. He takes a deep breath and changes tack before this escalates to shoving. Wouldn’t be the first time.

“There’s only one person I know of who’d put a bounty on Loki, and he’s a bigger threat than anyone. We should take this chance to get some intel.”

“You reckon Loki’s only pissed off one dude? Try more than one _in this room_.”

“Right, and you’ve been stapling posters to walls in every wretched hive of scum and villainy from here to the Andromeda galaxy. Look, just let me talk to him. Ten minutes.”

“Five,” says Coulson abruptly, but Tony was expecting it, so he doesn’t startle.

“You got it, Agent!” He’s dashing out the door before anyone realizes they would only have given him two if he hadn’t set the starting figure so high.

Natasha lets Tony in with a shrug, eager to get out of there. She prefers prey that has some fight in it.

Tony leans against the wall, arms folded across his chest, and regards the alien for a while. It’s human-seeming right now, but they have footage from the aliens’ warehouse base that proves it’s not his usual look. Shapeshifters: what are you gonna do?

The longer he lets the silence go on, the more fidgety ET gets. Sure, this is a tactic Natasha’s already tried, but she didn’t know the right question to ask at the end of it, when the alien is good and nervous.

Finally he says, falsely casual, “So. Tell me about Thanos.”

The alien jumps as if shot, and looks around the room like he’s expecting the big guy himself to walk out of the walls. “Shh! You can’t just talk about Th—the Titan. And I have no idea who that is anyway.”

Tony is embarrassed for the kid—he seems so young, it’s hard to escape thinking of him as a kid. He doesn’t even need to do anything, just keep standing there, arms folded, level gaze aimed at the alien, and the guy caves.

“Don’t make us leave without the target. Please! The Titan never forgives. He will send us to his mistress.”

To his mistress? That doesn’t sound so bad. Tony’s confusion must be evident on his face, because the alien guy rushes on in a tumble of words.

“Mistress Death, she’s insatiable for souls, and there’s never enough, and he’s destroying whole worlds, and she’s never going to be satisfied, and please I don’t want to be a tribute!”

Tony runs over this in his mind to try and untangle things.

“So what you’re saying is, He Who Shall Not Be Named is trying to impress the Grim Reaper by giving her souls as a tribute?”

Puzzlement at the nicknames, and then a mute nod.

“And he’s destroying whole worlds to do it?”

“Yes. The more souls the better. Your Earth will make such a feast!” He realizes what he’s let slip, and claps his cuffed hands to his mouth as if to force the words back in.

Tony shivers. "Will make? He's coming here?”

The alien looks away, and Tony grabs him by the shirt to haul him to his feet. He slams him against the wall just hard enough to wind him, and repeats the question.

“The Titan dude is on his way to Earth?”

The alien nods miserably. “He was… he was going to send his armies to my world…”

“But you found Loki on Earth, and led the Titan guy here to save yourself.” His guts twist in anger and dread.

“Please, I have to get out of here. If you’re not going to let me have the target, just let me leave. I can hide. You’ll never see me again…”

 _Well, shit_ , thinks Tony.


	16. Breathe for Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More smut, and because it's these two, it's once again pretty violent. This chapter contains semi-graphic descriptions of severe injuries (not during the sex), and arguably dub-con, because of Tony's altered mental state. He is totally into it, but Loki doesn't exactly go out of his way to ascertain that beforehand.

## Tony

_He walks the quiet halls again, finally coming before the throne, where he kneels in supplication to her. She is still, as if carved from white marble, only her eyes flicking toward him. Her chest does not rise and fall with breath._

_“I know what brings you here, sly one, and you know my price.”_

_“Our dealings were not as costly in the past.”_

_“In the past you were not hunted across all the Nine.”_

_“Very well. What Mephisto took from Hela by coercion I will return to her by trickery.”_

_“See that you do,” she says, and waves a hand in dismissal. The dream dissolves._

It takes Tony a few seconds to get his bearings. He’s fallen asleep on the couch in the communal living room, and the first thing he feels is relief that this dream-sharing means Loki probably isn’t dead. The second is the realization that he’s somehow managed to pull the silver dagger out of its wrappings in his sleep, and has his bare skin on the hilt, as if he can fight off the dead with it. The vibrations it’s sending up his arm are distracting enough that he doesn’t drop it immediately, and when he does, the details of the dream come seeping back.

_Hela?_ he wonders, reaching for his tablet.

***

Tony is running only ten minutes late for the board meeting, which is basically an hour early in Tony-time. He’s feeling pretty proud of himself, but upon seeing Pepper’s face he decides not to get all self-congratulatory just now. She slides a folder across the table as he sits down, and he flips through it while some finance monkey stands in front of a slide and points at figures. He frowns; admittedly, the figures are not as positive as he would have hoped if he’d given it enough thought to do any hoping.

“Nice of you to join us, Mr. Stark,” says some guy whose name is Perkins, or Palmer, or Parry—something like that, anyway.

“Well, you know, I wasn’t going to, but my lunch date had to cancel, so I thought, ‘Why not?’”

Powell (or whoever) purses his mouth in distaste, and Tony catches an eyeroll from Pepper out of the corner of his eye. Disapproving murmurs ripple through the rest of the suits around the table.

“As I was saying,” Powers begins again, “third quarter revenue is down 8% from last year. The last big product we announced was the new Starkphone in February, and our press coverage has been dropping ever since the launch in July. We need something new to catch the public’s attention. As head of R&D, would you like to share what you have in the works?”

It’s a few moments before Tony realizes that was directed at him.

“Well, I’ve been working on this thing about jet-powered roller-skates…”

Perry takes a deep breath, like a parent presented with a trashed house and resolving not to murder their child.

“Tough crowd,” grimaces Tony. “Fine, no jet-powered roller-skates.” His brain, because it goes at 120mph whether he wants it to or not, is churning over the fact that the whole Loki debacle was in March, and it’s now November. Eight months he’s been obsessing over one thing alone, and, apparently, neglecting other stuff enough that people are starting to notice. He realizes the silence is dragging out, clears his throat. “I’ve, ah, been working on some other stuff, but there are limited civilian applications.”

Porter pounces on that qualification. “No civilian applications? Could we be working with the military on this?”

Tony can’t suppress a snort. No, he does not intend to work with the military on his magic detection device.

“Sorry, Avengers only,” he replies, distracted. His phone just buzzed in his pocket, and he pulls it out, frowning at the screen.

_Sir, my instruments have detected a very faint S.A.P. signal in Canada. Signature matches that recorded on Mr. Laufeyson’s last visit._

“This Avengers business seems to be a great distraction from your work at Stark Industries,” says Perry. “Might I remind you that you have an obligation to your shareholders—”

He breaks off as Tony gets abruptly to his feet.

“Mr. Stark…?”

“Sorry guys, gotta run. Urgent superhero business. No jet-powered roller-skates: check. New products out the wazoo: check. Great seeing you, let’s do this again sometime…”

“Mr. Stark!”

“Tony!”

He grabs a donut on his way out the door, not because he even likes donuts all that much, but because it adds to the breeziness of his exit.

He stands on the roof, fidgeting with his armor-calling bracelets, calculating how long it’ll take for the suit to fly itself to Stark Industries HQ from the Avengers tower. About three minutes, as it turns out. He allows himself a small grin as it folds itself around him; damn, that thing’s fast.

The flight to British Columbia, however, takes long enough that he has time to ask himself all the questions he’s been avoiding. Such as, what if it isn’t Loki? And, even assuming it _is_ , what is he expecting to happen? Sure, certain body parts are definitely hoping for a re-run of last time, but his brain is telling him that’s even more of a monumentally bad idea than round one. At least that time he had the excuse of impulse; Western Canada is admittedly far for a booty call, even for him. Question three is, what if Loki has different ideas? Tony doesn’t actively want to die. It’s not even really a turn-on, outside of the context of a sexy alien sorcerer breathing (and bleeding) on him. It was just the possibility that it might happen that gave the sex that added edge. So what if Loki skips the foreplay and goes directly to the murdering?

He doesn’t even pretend to ask himself question four, which has to do with why he’s not calling his team right now. That’s bound up in his hopes re: question two.

As he flies further into the wilderness, another thing occurs to him: nobody who wants to be found is going to hide all the way out here. Perhaps Loki’s set up camp here so he can plot. Perhaps he’s not alone. Tony starts wishing he’d brought back-up after all. Well, since he flew all this way, he may as well scout things out and see if he needs to go back for the others.

“Sir?” Jarvis’s voice brings him back to himself. “The signal is growing fainter and more intermittent.”

Crap. That can’t be good. It either means they’re about to lose Loki, or—and this is somehow worse— _lose_ Loki. He pushes his speed to its max, closing the last two hundred miles in minutes.

At first when he reaches the valley he thinks he’s been led on a wild god chase. The mountains plunge, impossibly steep-sided, into a lake that has to be far deeper than it is long. Their slopes are furred with the rich green of spruce trees, growing right down to the waterline. There’s nothing here that isn’t wholesome and hearty and outdoorsy, nothing man-made. He can’t imagine Loki roughing it in the wilderness like this.

“Anything, Jarvis?”

“I can trace the source of the signal to that valley, sir, but unfortunately I cannot be more accurate than that. The mountains are causing significant interference.”

Fine. He’ll have to do this the hard way.

He brings himself down on a narrow gravel beach and flicks on the short-range SAP detectors in his suit. Now that he’s down below the mountains, the setting sun is obscured and he can hardly tell where the gray of the gravel ends and the gray of the lake begins.

Following the signal, he makes nearly a quarter lap of the lake, walking slowly to keep the noise of his footsteps down. If it hadn’t taken him so long that it’s gotten almost dark, he might have missed it. Back away from the lake, well behind the tree-line, he catches a faint glimmer peeking between the wide trunks, and stops. Now that he’s actually here, it’s easier to imagine some kind of magic Sasquatch roaring out of the woods than it is to believe Loki’s in some pokey little tent a thousand miles from nowhere.

Since he’s come all this way, he pushes on, slower and quieter than ever, undergrowth snagging at his boots, until he sees a dark rectangular shape looming out of the trees. It’s an actual cabin—rough-hewn logs, bark and all, but a cabin nonetheless. A square, unglazed window, barely more than a hole cut into the logs, opens onto a small room lit by no shit, f’reals lamplight, and in the room something is moving.

It’s hard to tell what he’s looking at in the dim light, and he finds himself staring until the image resolves into a human—a humanoid—figure, sitting on a plain bench, propped against the wall to keep from falling over, long matted hair straggling in its face. It trembles and shakes as it clutches one shoulder with the opposite hand, drawing in a shuddering breath. The longer he looks, the more obvious it becomes that there is something terribly wrong with the shoulder—with the way it hangs awkward and useless—and that the figure lacks the strength to do anything about it.

As he watches, the figure stills, trying with a visible effort to even out its breathing.

“Well, Stark?” The voice is barely more than a breath, but it startles Tony anyway. If the evening were not so still, he wouldn’t be able to make out the words. “Do you intend to stand there all night, or—” another shuddering breath through gritted teeth “—make yourself useful?”

The cabin’s rough door is heavy, but swings open easily enough with a push from his glove, to reveal a room that’s almost empty; there’s the bench Loki is sitting on, the table that holds the lamp, a lumpy mattress on the ground that if he had to guess is stuffed with something like straw, and not much else. Just before he pops up his faceplate, he sees the reading from the short-range SAP sensor: if he were not in the same room as its source, he thinks that right now it might be too weak to detect. The signal flickers and shudders with Loki’s uneven breaths.

Loki turns his face away, hiding behind the mat of his hair, but not before Tony gets a glimpse of the dark crust congealed there. The air in the room is rank with sweat, with the metallic tang of blood, and with other, less savory things that Tony can’t identify. Loki’s clothes hang off him in lank shreds, showing hints of further horrible injuries beneath.

Tony takes a deep breath of his own and makes the call before he can change his mind. The armor retracts from him smoothly, and folds itself up next to the table. A shiver goes through him; he’s dressed more for the boardroom (or, let’s be real, the workshop) than for late fall in northern BC.

He takes a knee next to where Loki sits, but still the god won’t catch his eye, so he put his fingertips gently to the chin, ignoring the hiss of pain and the stickiness of the skin, and turns Loki’s face toward him.

Even steeled against what he might see, it takes some effort not to react. The entire left side of Loki’s face is… well, _flayed_ is probably the best word. Scraped down to the bone in places, the eye glazed and sightless, a flap of scalp and hair still attached only because it’s glued there with dried blood.

“Can’t you…?” He trails off, because it’s a stupid question; if Loki could heal this, he would. He recalls the flickering readout of the scanner and winces. “Your magic is…”

“Depleted,” says Loki, clearly trying to muster more certainty and authority than he feels. “It will return. In time.”

“How much time?”

“…Not soon enough,” Loki admits after a pause.

He’s gotten weaker even since Tony arrived, slumping more heavily than ever against the wall, unable to support his dislocated shoulder with his other hand any more, letting it just hang there limp.

“Tell me how I can help,” Tony says.

Loki pulls his lips into a lopsided, mirthless smile. “How noble,” he rasps. “But I am afraid that nothing can help me now.” He pauses, and makes a vague gesture with his less-injured arm, as if indulging an idle joke, or daydream. “Save perhaps if you happen to have the Tesseract about you?”

“Nice try, Prancer,” Tony says, but he’s gentle about it, almost wistful. “A girl could start thinking you only want her for her magic space cubes.” He sighs deeply. “And there isn’t another way?”

Loki blinks dazedly, as if fighting the urge to close his eyes for good. Tony follows his downward glance to where his hand rests on his leg, curled loosely open to reveal a silken web of silvery strands that tangle around his fingers, connecting them to a flat round stone that fits in the hollow of his palm. It’s a translucent, opalescent blue, and looks fragile enough that if Loki had the strength to squeeze his hand closed, he could crush it to powder.

It reminds Tony of nothing so much as a magic version of one of his repulsor gloves.

But if it’s magic, shouldn’t it be glowing, or pulsing, or something?

“Out of juice?” Tony guesses.

Loki nods, a tiny movement that Tony wouldn’t notice if he didn’t still have his fingertips on Loki’s chin. “Broken. Just a…. just a conduit now.”

“An energy conduit? Okay, just spitballing here, but does it have to be the Tesseract, or will any similar power source suffice?”

“That depends,” says Loki slowly, as if trying to figure out where he’s going with this. His breathing is starting to get erratic, and he’s barely clinging to consciousness. No wonder he can hardly follow what Tony’s saying.

“How about…” Tony pulls up his shirt slightly, bracing himself against the cold of the air on his skin, and of Loki’s hand when he takes it and places it over the core of energy that glows there. “How about this?”

Loki brings his one whole eye up to look at Tony, confusion and hesitation on his face. He really must be feeling out of it, because those two emotions look entirely out of place there, and it occurs to Tony to wonder whether, assuming he can save Loki, the reindeer of chaos might not end up killing him just for seeing this. Sure, he’s seen Loki injured before, but he was unconscious for most of that, so maybe he doesn’t know the extent of the vulnerability Tony saw.

Too late to worry about that now. He’s made the offer, so he’ll see it through.

“It’s…”

“Kinda like the Tesseract, yeah.”

And Loki knows of its existence, of course. It’s what caused his ‘performance issues’ when they had their confrontation in Tony’s penthouse, and God knows (well… one god knows) he’s seen more than just Tony’s chest before. It’s evident in his surprise, though, that he didn’t really understand what it was.

Hell, _Tony_ didn’t understand until he got some brief hands-on time with the Tesseract before Thor flew away with it (and Loki) to Narnia. He’s still not sure he gets the full implications.

Loki’s strength is waning, and Tony has to hold Loki’s hand against the arc reactor.

“Now or never, Dasher.”

“Won’t be… pleasant… for you…”

“You die on me now, I won’t like that much either.”

He slides onto the bench next to Loki, and pulls him close against his side with one arm, using the other hand to keep pressing Loki’s to his chest, fitting the circle of translucent blue stone to the circle of the reactor as best he can.

He doesn’t notice the moment it begins, only that after a while there is the sensation of a creeping numbness in his chest, as if a rime of frost is spreading across his skin. They remain locked together like that for what feels like hours, the only change the gradual tightening of Loki’s grip as his strength returns. Tony finds himself leaning his head on Loki’s shoulder. There’s probably a reason he should think twice about that, but he’s so… tired. The rough bark of the walls swims in the dim light, and he feels like he’s underwater.

Loki’s arm around him is now the only thing keeping him upright. The chill feels remote, as though it’s happening to someone else. A great shudder wracks him, and Loki only presses him closer. He doesn’t struggle, but his limbs twitch and spasm involuntarily, and the grip around him gets tighter. His heart is racing, but his mind is sluggish. He should stop this. He was supposed to… he was trying to… there was something. A thing. That he needed to do…

Loki will take care of it.

He should just… sleep…

He slumps against the god’s shoulder, legs sliding out from under him, and things blur for a moment.

When the world swims back in, he’s on his feet, and he has no idea how he got there. Well, he’s on them, technically, but it’s not like he’s actually standing. Loki is holding him up with one strong arm around his waist, they’re chest to chest except for Loki’s hand between them still pressed against the arc reactor, and he’s shuddering and shaking uncontrollably. Just like when he had Loki’s fingers wrapped around his throat, he is clinging on to the finest thread of consciousness, and somehow it sharpens all his other sensations. He can feel every inch of Loki’s body pressed against his, every flex of hard muscle, every beat of his heart. He can smell, still, the tang of blood, but beneath that is a strange, wild scent that is just Loki. He knows, distantly, that he is still glacially cold, but he doesn’t feel it.

Loki is close enough that they’re breathing the same air, his mouth the only source of heat.

“Stark,” he feels as much as he hears, a whisper tinged with possessiveness and inexplicable reverence.

He presses up into the kiss at the same moment that Loki leans down. He imagines the energy of his arc reactor flowing into Loki’s mouth from his like a fine silver mist. His energy is a part of Loki now. He brings up his right hand to touch Loki’s face, and the skin there is tender and new, but whole. The god shudders at his touch, pain tinged with undeniable pleasure, and pulls him impossibly closer, until his toes are barely trailing on the floor, his body entirely supported by the arm around him, and he tilts his head back to allow Loki to deepen the kiss. Their lips move against each other’s for a long time, but it is still too soon when Loki pulls away and the cold air rushes in between them.

“Wait,” he gasps. “I want— I want—”

“What do you want, Stark?”

He has no idea what he wants.

“You wish for surrender,” Loki tells him.

And no, that's not quite it. He’s Tony Fucking Stark. He does what he wants. He’s not going to just let someone stake their claim on him. No, not _someone_ …

“Just you,” he says, too hazy to make the rest of the sentence.

“You are giving yourself to me,” says Loki, and that reverence is back.

“Yes,” he says on the end of a sigh.

And for once he has said exactly the right thing; he can tell by the uneven breath Loki takes, and by the pounding of the heart against his chest.

The room tilts and shifts, and he is trapped against the wall with nowhere to put his legs but around Loki, and nowhere to put his arms but around Loki, and nothing to do but to open himself and allow Loki to take what he wants.

All the while, the energy keeps flowing, his heart beating more erratically. He’s joked about dying of sex before, but this wasn’t quite what he imagined. Somehow, with Loki, things are never quite what he imagines.

He’s dying. This time he’s going to die for real. Between the starbursts and the heart pounding, and the… other pounding… death is so close he can taste it. One final pressing thought occurs to him.

“Loki…”

There is no reply from the breathless god.

“Loki,” he says more urgently, forcing his eyes to focus on the face before him.

Loki says nothing, but catches Tony’s eye.

“Don’t let them wonder,” he says, and he’s not sure any of this comes out as words. “Send them my body.”

The hand that is not spread across his arc reactor tightens painfully on his hip, and Loki pulses into him, and the sensations and the breathlessness and that face inches from his lost in utter abandon, and the only thing he can feel is the place where they are joined; the rest of his body is distant and unreal. He is coming, and coming, and the wave surges up and swallows him and he lets himself go under.


	17. I'm Not Running

## Tony

He wakes up, which surprises him.

He is also surprised that he’s lying on the straw mattress with the tatters of Loki’s coat draped over him, and that there’s a fire roaring in the wood-burning stove.

What does not surprise him in the least is that it’s now fully dark, and Loki is nowhere to be seen.

Typical. Loki energy-vampired him, answered no questions, and left. He pushes himself shakily to his feet, making his heart race. Slowly, then. He’s uncoordinated, drained; his hands are trembling almost too much to put on his armor.

He finds his shoes stashed neatly under the bench, and on it, wrapped loosely in a piece of soft fabric, the silver dagger. Loki must have placed it there when he tucked Tony into bed (and isn’t that a hilarious image?); obviously it isn’t time for him to take it back yet.

He’s fumbling to close the manual fastening on a leg piece when the door creaks open and the first fluffy snowflakes of a blizzard swirl in on a gust of icy air. He looks up, puzzled, and his frown meets Loki’s.

“Leaving so soon, Stark?”

“You were… I thought you…” He surprises himself with the strength of his relief that Loki came back.

“You are in no condition to fly,” Loki interrupts, like he doesn’t want to hear Tony say it. Like he’s offended. “Eat.”

Loki holds out a forked stick on which there is a roasted leg of something. Squirrel? Rabbit? Tony takes it and tries not to think about it. Somehow he hadn’t imagined Loki with wilderness survival skills, though he supposes from Thor’s tales of Asgard that it makes sense he’d have picked some up on his adventures. As soon as the smell hits his nostrils, Tony’s stomach gives a loud groan, and he sinks his teeth in eagerly, mystery meat reservations forgotten.

Tony chews, and eyes Loki’s face with open curiosity. Faint traces of his ordeal remain, the skin still pink and raw, and he is thinner than the last time Tony saw him, but other than that it’s hard to believe this is the same person who only a few hours ago (It is just hours, right?) looked like he’d been butchered. His clothes are shredded, and Tony’s still wearing what’s left of his coat, but Loki doesn’t seem to feel the cold. His pale skin is smooth and goosebump-free.

Loki breaks off in the middle of what he’s saying (Tony hadn’t realized he was saying anything) and asks, peevishly, “What?”

“You didn’t want to die,” Tony blurts.

“What?” Loki says again, this time low and full of menace.

“You latched on and practically drained me dry.”

“Yes, Stark, I have a survival instinct. I’m so sorry to disappoint you.”

“No! No, it’s not that.” _It’s the opposite of that._ “I’m…” _Glad. Relieved. Hopeful._ “I’m cool with it.”

“Well, enlightening though this is, there is news I would have you know.”

Tony nods encouragement and keeps tearing into his squirrel leg. He’s starting to feel the life creeping back in, the trembling subsiding.

“Midgard is in danger.”

“Again,” says Tony with a pointed look before he can think better of it.

Loki snorts. “The horror that is coming would make your petty humans wish that I had ruled them.  I speak not of conquest but annihilation.”

“Yeah, I know. Than—” He breaks off at Loki’s warning expression. “The Titan dude wants to feed us to his girlfriend.”

He gets a raised eyebrow that he could swear is to cover amusement. “Crudely put, but more or less accurate.”

“He the one who gave you that extra-close shave?”

“No. I grew careless and allowed myself to be captured by an old friend. Had I been at the Titan’s mercy again, I would not have escaped so lightly.”

_Lightly_. That’s not how Tony would have put it. He remembers Loki’s eye, glazed and sightless, and shudders.

"Some friends you’ve got.”

Loki gives his mouth a wry twist. “I sought out Mephisto to see if he was willing to deal with me, but it seems I underestimated the grudge he bears for… our last interaction.”

“Frenemies, gotcha.”

The ancient Norse space-god snorts like he actually gets that term, which maybe he does. Maybe he spends his downtime surfing the net and watching teen movies, who knows? He tosses the now-inert magic web glove onto the table in disgust. “This object once contained cosmic power. I thought I could salvage my trip by taking something of value as I left, but it seems that by itself it is now useless.”

"Won't he chase you for it?”

“I’m sure he’ll try and make me pay eventually, but he’s not one to leave his own realm on such a petty errand. We have more pressing concerns.”

“So, question: what does he have to do with Hela?”

Loki actually looks thrown for a moment. “How do you know of her?”

“I’ve been doing some reading. No idea how much of it was a fairy story and how much was based in fact, which is why I’m asking.”

“Then you’ll know that they are rulers of rival underworlds, locked in eternal competition for the souls of the dead.”

“And Hela, she’s your daughter, right?”

“I created her, yes,” says Loki guardedly, and don’t think that Tony hasn’t noticed that that’s not actually an answer.

“So he hates you because you created his rival?”

Loki looks amused. “I suppose that is one reason.”

“One reason? Do you actually collect enemies on purpose?”

“Do you provoke a god on purpose?”

“I don’t know; what does it get me?” He leers at Loki, who takes a deep breath, as if rallying his patience. “Fine, fine. Back on topic. So what can we do about this Titan dude?”

“Do? Against the Mad Titan?” Loki barks a laugh, as if it was startled from him. There’s an unsettling note of crazy in it. “You misunderstand. I merely inform you so that you can find refuge in another realm.”

“No can do, Brave Sir Robin. I kinda live here, remember?”

“Then I inform you that you may make your peace before the end.” Loki tries for a careless shrug, but it’s hard to shrug when your shoulders are up around your ears and you’re practically vibrating with tension.

“Aww, that’s sweet. You really care!” Tony puts one hand to his arc reactor.

“You would be a fool to stay,” says Loki, unable to look him in the eye. “I know many secret paths between realms.”

Tony blinks. He isn’t certain, but he thinks that was Loki-ese for _please run away with me._ So he drops the sarcasm, and responds with more sincerity, “I can’t. All those people…”

“Will make a feast for the Lady.”

“Not if I can help it.”

Loki slams the palms of both hands on the table, and leans toward Tony. The intensity of his glare feels like it’s going to set Tony on fire. “You are worth a thousand of them,” he sneers, making it sound like a backhanded compliment, like a thousand petty humans aren’t worth so much after all. “Why throw your life away?”

“Says the guy whose elaborate suicide plot involved heists on multiple continents.”

“Then you do wish to die. I could finish you now and save you the pain of watching your world burn.”

“Yeah, no. I don’t believe you’re gonna do that.”

That’s not what he was supposed to say, apparently. Before Tony can take a breath, he finds himself shoved face first against the wall, rough bark tearing the skin from his cheek, and one arm wrenched behind his back. Loki presses his full weight against him, and Tony couldn’t move if he tried.

“Do not make the mistake of forgetting who I am,” Loki hisses into his ear, and in the next breath vanishes, leaving Tony gasping and hard. Again.

“Diva could at least have given me a ride home,” he mutters to the empty air.

## Darcy

Darcy was kind of hoping there’d be dead-drops, or files passed inside newspapers while sitting on back-to-back park benches, but getting her orders from Simon is usually much more prosaic. Aside from the iPod nano, which contained a briefing and threat analysis of some of the more high-profile aliens (Thor among them), most of the time it’s just been a fake date here or there, where somewhere between the second cocktail and dessert he mentions that he needs her to pass along this message, or hold up that paperwork for a day or two.

It’s easy to tell herself it’s innocuous, easy to forget that she and Simon aren’t in fact just hanging out.

“Really?” she says into his ear, leaning close to be heard over the music. “A burlesque show?”

“Well, you can’t really talk at the theater,” he says, his smile apologetic. “I thought you’d like it?”

The dancer on stage does a spectacular hip-popping belly dance move, and everything sparkles and shimmies.

“Oh, I like it,” says Darcy, and cups her mouth to whoop appreciatively.

He puts his arm around her shoulders, and she leans into him. Nothing to see here, just a couple out for a night on the town. What he’s saying is, “We have something big for you. We think you can handle it.”

She snickers, still caught up in the ambience. “That’s what she said.”

He shakes her a little. “You need to take this seriously. This target is no joke.”

Darcy pulls back a little to look at him. “You know me, nothin’ but serious.” She does, however, rein in the giggles and give him her attention. “What’s this target?”

“Stark.”

She shakes her head. “I’m sorry, I thought you just asked me to spy on a paranoid billionaire with unlimited tech resources and—” she cuts herself off before mentioning the world’s only self-aware AI, because she has a feeling that Simon’s dad would be all over that if he knew. “And a shitload of weapons,” she says instead.

“I know,” he says. “I know. I’m sorry.” He’s practically wringing his hands here.

“OK, chill, just tell me what they want.”

“I’m sorry,” he says again, miserable. “I have to ask, you know that, right?” He puts his hands up to cover his face, and she can’t help but notice they’re trembling. He takes a deep breath, steadies himself. “You’re the only one in position for this. You have access to the tower, you can come and go. They all think of you as Foster’s intern, harmless. The alien likes you.”

“Yeah, that’s me, clueless intern mascot. Could you just stop describing me and tell me what the job is?”

“We think Stark’s been compromised by extraterrestrial influences.”

“Thor?” she says, and no, of course it’s not Thor, but she has to keep her cards close to her chest or he’ll start quizzing her on what she knows.

“The other one.” He leans in, whispers urgently in her ear. “Loki.”

She raises her eyebrows in surprise, because it’s expected. Bites her lower lip, thinking. Eventually nods. “Yeah. Someone needs to look into it, and I’m well-placed. OK.”

“OK?” His relief is etched on his face.

“I’ll do it.”

“Call me if you need backup. Any time. I’ll figure something out.”

She smiles, tries to make it warm, but can’t quite get it to reach her eyes.

## Tony

They have a full complement of Avengers for once; even Thor is back from Asgard for a couple of weeks. Tony’s suited up and in the air before the others can scramble the quinjet, and for a few minutes he gives in to the urge to push his speed, to dive in and out of the clouds. He’s spent so much time in the workshop lately that it’s been a while since he really reveled in the joy of flying. The journey to BC was too desperate and rushed to count, and the trip back too weary and confused.

The thing he loves the best is the moment he breaks the sound barrier, and the acceleration leading up to it. The sonic boom, the G-forces—sensations almost no human has ever experienced without tons of metal surrounding them, cutting them off from the purity of the experience. He swoops back around, paces the quinjet for a few seconds, and when he sees Clint give him the finger through the windshield, he returns a sarcastic little wave and takes off again.

“What have we got?” Steve asks over the comm.

“Portals,” Agent responds. “Multiple portals opening up in rural Maine, and too many exobiological signatures to count.”

They all know by now that ‘exobiological’ is S.H.I.E.L.D.-speak for ‘animals from we have no idea where.’

“Alien monsters,” says Clint. “Just another day ending in Y.”

“May the beasts provide as much challenge as a bilgesnipe hunt,” puts in Thor.

“As long as they go down when we shoot them, I don’t care where they come from.” That’s Natasha, in clipped tones, and with a sound like she’s loading a fresh magazine into her weapon.

“Just leave enough for me to take samples,” says Bruce. “The medical possibilities presented by the alien bio matter…”

Tony lets the chatter wash over him for the most part. The sky is clear, his team is bantering; life is good.

## Darcy

By the time Darcy’s team arrives on scene in Maine, the Avengers have already waded into battle with an assortment of improbable creatures. Agent Chang leads them west around the farmland, assigning each agent spots along the edge of the field, just inside the trees.

“Maintain this perimeter,” she says. “Anything makes it out here, turn it back and let the Avengers deal with it. Our job is to contain the threat away from the town. No heroics.”

“Not a problem, boss-ma’am,” says Darcy, feeling decidedly un-heroic as she trudges to her spot a few yards behind the tree-line and sets up with a view of the battlefield. Hiding is basically impossible, since the ground is blanketed with a couple of feet of snow and her snow shoes leave a trail announcing _DARCY IS HERE!_ , but she can at least be out of the path of stuff flying about the battlefield.

Chang keeps moving, and sets up close enough that they can exchange hand signals, but there are too few of them and too large a perimeter, so Darcy’s feeling kind of out on a limb over here. Still, she has her weapon in her hand, and the adrenaline sharpening her focus. She’s trained for this. She zips up her S.H.I.E.L.D. parka as high as it will go, grateful for her breath as it warms the tip of her nose, even as it fogs her glases.

For the first twenty minutes, the most excitement she gets is when a six-legged purple thing about the size of a horse, with long face-tentacles, makes a break for the trees. She glances over at Chang, and at her team leader’s signal, they both activate a setting on their comm that blocks a certain audio frequency. Nothing sounds different, as such, but her head feels muffled, like she’s fighting off a sinus infection, and there’s a hum like an old-fashioned TV.

Chang lobs a sonic device at the ground near the creature’s paws. It suddenly occurs to Darcy to hope that the creatures are sensitive to the same frequencies as Earth animals—hell, that they have ears at all—so it’s a relief when Purple Cthulhu cringes back away from the trees and rejoins the fight just in time to get a Hawkeye special through its eye socket.

It’s not long after that, though, that an armored crimson-and-gold figure hurtles toward them, pursued by something, and it’s one thing to outwit mindless alien monsters and wait for the clean-up, but another to have Iron Man bringing an enemy right to where she’s hiding. She’s trying to make plans that don’t involve running, because god knows that’s not happening in these shoes, when suddenly he stops and lands a dozen or so yards away, sinking nearly up to his knees in the snow.

_He lured that enemy here,_ she realizes. No, not _to here_ , but _away from the others._ Well, isn’t that interesting?

The two circle each other, and they’re not trading blows. Tony gestures, and his opponent throws back her head in what looks like bitter laughter. She can’t hear them, which means Tony’s turned off his comm. Also very interesting.

They end up with Tony between her and the enemy, so she can’t get a good look. She can tell that it’s a woman, tall, haughty, with incredibly upright posture. Fancy dress, obviously, but not in the superhero style, more in the ‘raided the theater costume department’ style. She watches them talk for a few moments, and there’s something familiar about the woman tickling at the edge of her brain. After signaling to Chang, she picks her way forward, stealthy as she can, until she’s behind the tree nearest the pair.

Of course, that’s when they decide to stop talking. Ms. Shakespeare 2015 makes the first move, backhanding Iron Man with ease into a tree. Darcy has no idea how much the armor weighs, but suddenly Lady Macbeth is looking a whole lot scarier. Tony uses the repulsors to blast back upright, and launches himself through the air into his opponent, sending them tumbling over and over each other through the snow. He hovers up, and she jumps back to her feet with a dancer’s grace, and there’s a wild, wicked smile on her lips.

They’re fighting to hurt, that much she can tell, but not to kill, and it’s like they can predict each other’s actions, like they know each other. Like it’s personal.

The blows get more and more vicious, culminating with her on her back, and him kneeling astride her holding her wrists down, and that is… way more sexy-looking than a superhero/villain fight ought to be.

They’re close enough for her to hear now, and what she hears only adds to her conviction that there’s Something Going On.

“Just be glad I didn’t take refuge in the Cancerverse,” villain lady is saying conversationally, and making no effort to get away. “The creatures there are undying, and would have made great sport of your precious Midgard.”

“Undying, huh? How’s that work?”

“When Death is defeated, no being may die.”

“Sounds like something people would pay good money for.”

“It is not a curse you would wish to inflict upon our universe. Trust me.”

“Trust you,” Tony chuckles. “Uh-huh.”

The air pressure in Darcy’s ears increases for a moment, and there’s a smell of ozone, and suddenly Lady Macbeth is standing several feet behind where Tony still kneels, leaning against a tree and examining her nails casually.

“Believe what you will. I do not think it is your most pressing concern, however.” She inclines her head toward the distant cluster of portals, which are still spewing out creatures.

“Well, it’s such a shame you got away,” says Tony pointedly, getting to his feet, “but at least I managed to get some info out of you on how to close the portals.”

An exaggerated, put-upon sigh.

“Oh, very well. It is simple enough, if one has the trick of it.” She tosses a small gilded object, which Tony catches automatically. “Separate the halves, and the portals will dissipate.” While Tony’s poking at that with his clumsy gloved hands, she honors him with an elaborate bow. “A pleasure as always,” she says with only a slight hint of sarcasm, and vanishes.

And everything clicks into place for Darcy.

## Tony

He’s standing there fumbling with some weird magic egg, trying both to avoid crushing it in his gauntlets, and to ignore his hard-on (which is incredibly inconvenient in the armor, he can attest), when someone steps out from behind a nearby tree.

His first instinct is to lift up one palm and take aim, but he gets halfway there when he realizes who he’s looking at. Agent Lewis flicks her pistol’s safety on, holsters it, and holds out one hand for the object.

“Here, I have fingers.”

Tony is frozen. She’s acting so casual, but he knows she has to have seen at least some of that. Did she hear? What does she know?

Darcy gestures impatiently. “Come on, they’re dealing with hot and cold running monsters over there.”

He places it into her hand, and she starts wading laboriously toward the fight while she fiddles with it. With a touch to her ear, she says, “You OK holding the perimeter, Chang? I think I can help end this.” She’s acting pretty normal. Maybe she didn’t see anything, or it didn’t mean anything to her. The game is going to be up one day, he’s not stupid enough to pretend otherwise, but maybe it’s not today.

Then he sees her flick something on the earpiece to turn off her comm, and he knows he’s busted. Well, Darcy-busted. It looks like she doesn’t plan to tell anyone just yet, if he can only play this right, and not let her in on the fact that the villain was actually—

“So, Loki,” she says.

Ah, shit.

“Since you were kidnapped? Or before that?”

He weighs the pros and cons of being up-front with her, but while he’s thinking, she’s already talking again.

“You know,” she’s saying, “I got assigned a very interesting task. See, I know some people who think you have insight into where Loki’s stashing himself these days, and they really hate being in the dark. They also think I might be able to get that info out of you. I have no idea what makes them think either of these things.” Then, abruptly stopping in her tracks, “Aha!”

She’s finally managed to twist something on the little ball, and comes away with one half in either hand. He sees the portals flicker out, but the others are still going hand to tentacle with a variety of critters that look like the unholy lovechild of Dr. Seuss and H. R. Giger.

“I’d better get back in the fight,” he says. “Cap’ll get all pouty if I don’t help him clean up this mess.”

Darcy raises an eyebrow as a monster head flies past them, propelled by Mjolnir. “Looks like they’ve got it under control.” She puts a hand out and lays it on his forearm. It’s not like she’s actually stopping him leaving, but he thinks maybe it’s a bad idea to be too eager to get away, to let her know he has something to hide.

“Something on your mind, Nancy Drew?”

“Look, I’ll keep your little secret from the people who think they’re my bosses, for now. But give me one good reason why I shouldn’t tell, oh, say… Thor?”

“Because we’re in danger—”

“That sounds like extra reason to tell him.”

“Because we’re in danger,” he repeats, slower and more pointedly, “and if the others find out where I’m getting my info we’ll spend longer arguing about how reliable it is than actually getting ready for war.”

“War,” she says, and she doesn’t even seem surprised. Like she knew this was coming.

“Yeah, your friends—” he ignores her snort—“are in talks with Than—the Titan, right? And they’re closing in on Loki, who they’re going to offer up as a sacrifice. Well, Lord Voldemort’s still got his heart set on Earth. When they bring him here, you think he’s just going to take their little deal and leave us alone?”

“And I’m guessing you have a plan.”

“I’ve been told there’s nothing we can do.” He waits for the worry to set in, and then flashes her a patented Tony Stark grin. “Then again, you know what happens when someone backs me into a corner. And…” he reaches out and she lets him take back the two halves of the magic egg, which he holds up in the watery December sunlight to examine. “I feel a brilliant idea coming on.”


	18. Know Your Enemy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: homophobia, internalized homophobia, Simon being painfully closeted, and one homophobic slur.

## Darcy

“I was going to ask you if you wanted to see my parents’ place,” was what Simon said, “but I realized I just want you there for moral support and it wasn’t really fair to act like I was doing you a favor.”

“What’s the occasion?”

“Every Christmas Eve they have an exclusive soiree… and every Christmas Eve they ask me if I’m going to bring a girl.”

Darcy had laughed and flashed him a reassuring smile. “Why not? I’d love to see how the other half live.”

Now, she’s having second thoughts. She’s loitering on the Boyntons’ doorstep in a borrowed frock, feeling like a sausage squeezed into a too-small casing, and waiting what seems like an interminable time for someone to answer the door. She yoinks the one-shoulder dress up under her armpits again, and hopes it stays put a bit longer this time.

Finally, the door swings open, revealing a butler—she can tell he’s a butler because he’s wearing the uniform, though he’s a bit younger than her idea of a butler—who raises his eyebrows quizzically and intones, “May I help you?”

His snooty attitude actually makes things easier, because it makes her sass kick in, overriding any nerves she might have been feeling. _Polite,_ she reminds herself. _Gotta be polite to the help._

“Hi, yeah. I’m Darcy Lewis. Friend of Simon’s? He said to get here before the party kicks off, wants to show me around the grounds or something. Think I’m early.”

“Indeed. This way, please, Miss Lewis.”

He shows her into a stuffy room he calls the parlor, and asks her to stay put while he announces her to the family. She perches on the edge of an uncomfortable armchair and tries not to fidget with her clothes too much.

She decides the butler must either be having trouble finding Simon, or have forgotten all about her, because it feels like an age before she hears any other sign of life. When she does, though, it’s coming not from the grand hallway but from behind the closed door on the other side of the parlor, and it’s the Senator’s voice in mid-rant that she hears first.

“…times have we gone over this? The primaries start next month, and I’m already playing catchup in the polls.”

“I don’t care about the polls, dad. It’s making me miserable to keep pretending!”

The Senator snorts. “Miserable? You’re driving your mother into an early grave, you selfish little brat.”

Darcy clenches her fists and sucks in a quiet breath. It’s not like her to sit silently by while her friends get attacked, but she knows it’d only make things worse for Simon if she barged in. There’s also a traitorous part of her brain that reminds her it’d be useful to overhear the rest of this without them knowing she’s there.

“Maybe she’d be happier if she just stayed out of my goddamn business!” Simon’s saying.

That’s answered with the sound of a rough slap, and a choked-off cry from Simon.

“Watch your mouth.” Senator Boynton isn’t shouting, and that’s somehow worse. His voice is harsh, and even, and controlled. “Pull yourself together before the guests get here, and I don’t want to hear any more about your _misery_. We’ll continue this conversation later.”

Darcy scrambles to put herself out of sight on the other side of a large bookcase, just in time for the door to open, and watches the Senator sweep through the parlor, adjusting a cufflink with forced casualness as he goes. From the other room she hears a strangled scream and a thump.

The door’s open, but she knocks as she enters, just to give him warning. He’s turned partly away from her, cradling his right hand in his left, nursing his knuckles tenderly. No sign of what he hit; the solid wood dining table can probably take a few punches.

“Simon…” She doesn’t know whether to hug him. “Couldn’t help overhearing…”

“He found—he found…” Simon breaks off, unable to continue.

She puts one arm around his waist, and pulls him toward the stairs. “Let’s not talk about this down here. Come on, I’ll get you cleaned up.”

The staff have been setting out drinks, so she snakes a few pieces of ice from an ice bucket in the hallway and wraps them in a cloth napkin. Simon leads her upstairs, into a room that’s done up like an office or a study, and perches on the edge of the desk while she presses the improvised ice pack to his bruised fist. He’s mostly silent for a few minutes, and she pretends she doesn’t notice that he’s fighting back tears.

“This used to be mine,” he says after a while, gesturing around the room with his uninjured hand. “I mean, these were the rooms I had growing up. My folks keep them for when I visit.”

He takes over the ice pack duties to let her prowl round the walls, looking at the crap on all the bookcases: trophies, school memorabilia, photographs. It’s all very staged—doesn’t, she thinks, reveal anything about what Simon is actually like.

No, what reveals something about Simon is that he pulls down a couple of volumes of some encyclopedia from the top shelf, and grabs the bottle of high-end vodka that’s stashed behind them, along with two actual glasses. He holds it up in an offer, and she nods.

He splashes a little over the side as he pours them each a shot. He’s down one hand, and his good one is trembling, probably from stress, but up close she gets a whiff of something that makes her think he started drinking a while ago. And with a father like his, who can blame him?

“Here. Let me.” She screws the cap back onto the bottle and hands him his glass.

He knocks it back without pause. “I’m sorry you had to hear that,” he mumbles into his empty glass. “Guess I’m never done embarrassing my family.”

“Yep, and you know how much I’m judging you right now for your bad form.” She flashes him an easy grin, but can’t keep it up for more than a couple of seconds. “Sorry, Simon. I knew your dad gave you a hard time, but I had no idea things were this bad.”

“I hate him, Darcy. He’s a bigot, built his whole career on hating aliens, atheists… Fags.” His mouth twists in disgust and self-loathing.

“What happened?” she asks gently.

“He found my Christmas present from my—from this person I’ve been—from a guy.”

"Ah."

"I hadn't even opened it. I guess the note card sounded a bit suggestive, so dad decided he had to know.”

“What was it?” She’s trying not to come across as too curious, but this definitely sounds like juicy gossip.

“It was…um…” He’s blushing. He’s totally blushing this adorable shade of bright pink. He pours another shot and downs it before he can begin to speak again. “A book of poetry.” Oh, huh. Well that doesn’t sound too bad. Except he’s lowering his voice almost to a whisper. “You know, gay… erotic… poetry. With illustrations.”

“Oh my god, your guy sounds awesome!”

She didn’t mean to make him blush even harder, but that’s what’s happening.

“He doesn’t really know me at all, or he wouldn’t have given me that.”

“That’s too bad. It sounds like he wants to get to know you better.” She doesn’t quite waggle her eyebrows, but it’s pretty clear what she means.

“Oh god Darcy, shut up!” He swats her on the arm, but he’s smiling for the first time since Darcy got here.

“What are you going to do?”

He runs a hand over his face. “I don’t know, send it back? Go live with my cousins in New Zealand? Fake my own death?”

“That’s a bit extreme, don’t you think?”

“Is it? There’s no way I’ll ever get out from my dad’s shadow here. My whole life revolves around pushing his agenda!”

“And is that what you want?” she asks, quietly. “To stop working for your dad’s agenda?”

There’s a pause, in which they’re looking searchingly at each other, Simon breathing hard. Then, he seems to snap back into himself. “No!” he says, too quickly. “That not what I meant. I—”

Darcy’s trying to work through the possibilities. Does she have a back-up plan if he doesn’t go for the bait, stays loyal to his father? Eh, too late. She’s never been one to overthink things. This is the chance she’s been waiting for, and he couldn’t have given her a clearer signal. She takes a deep breath.

“Hey, chill out. I’m not judging, here. You said it yourself—his whole campaign is about hate and fear. I think… I think he’s dangerous.”

His eyes are wide, and he glances around the room as if expecting his dad to burst through the door with a bunch of fake-S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.

"Okay,” she says. “You’re right, we can’t have this conversation here. But we should have it, and soon.”

He nods, still dazed and uncertain. “What can we do against him? He’s powerful.”

Darcy guesses that Simon’s never known a day of freedom, or any time that wasn’t dictated by his father. “Don’t worry, he’s not the only person with power,” she says, putting her hand on his arm. “But I think your guests are arriving. We should go mingle before they miss you.”

He nods, and lets her lead him downstairs to the party.

## Tony

At this point, he probably shouldn’t be surprised to see Darcy Lewis keeping a step or two ahead of him in the game, but when she sweeps, doing a fairly close approximation of ‘regal’, down the grand staircase on the arm of the Senator’s son—whispering confidentially in his ear, and _what’s going on between those two?_ he wonders—he has to remind himself to quit underestimating her.

"Ah, there you are, darling,” a softly-accented female voice says in his ear, and a glass of cognac is placed into his hand.

“What th—”

And of course it’s Loki. Sexy Italian Loki from the museum in Florence, specifically, and he’s trying to figure out what Loki’s big picture is when it comes to choosing which skin to wear on any given day. It’s probably highly symbolic and important, but right now he’s on a mission, and doesn’t have time to figure it out, so he accepts the glass like he was expecting it, and kisses her on the cheek, and says, “Thanks, babe. You read my mind.”

Her eyes widen at the endearment, first in surprise, and then in delight. There’s a twinkle there that says, _the game is on._

“You got balls coming here,” Tony murmurs.

Loki raises one eyebrow, glances down at herself. “That isn’t exactly how I would have put it.”

“You know what I mean.” Handwave. “Aren’t there about twenty different sets of people trying to kill you? Many of them right here in this room?”

“That is, of course, why I had to come.”

“Of course.” Fine. They don’t have time to go another round of ‘who’s got the bigger deathwish?’ because the Senator is headed their way.

“Mr. Stark,” he nods. “Glad you could make it.”

“Senator.” Tony wangled this invite at the last minute by hinting that he might be interested in making a contribution to the Senator’s presidential campaign. He won’t, of course, but the dirty feeling at even making the suggestion is so strong that he’s promised himself he’ll wash it off by contributing twice as much to Boynton’s opponent when this is all over.

"I must admit, I was surprised to receive your call, Mr. Stark. We’ve never particularly seen eye to eye.”

“Yeah, I’m on the frontlines out there. Alien threats every other day; I’m bound to have my opinions about it.” Opinions like Thor being one of the handful of people in the universe who he trusts to have his back. Opinions like how, now there’s been alien contact, it’s in Earth’s best interest to get involved, make allies, choose their position in the universe rather than having it forced on them. Opinions like this burning curiosity he feels about the alien tech he’s just scratched the surface of.

But yeah, take a leaf out of Loki’s book, lie with the truth. Let the Senator hear what he wants to hear.

The Senator gives the self-satisfied nod of someone who’s just had his prejudices confirmed. “War’ll do that to you,” he says. And, yeah, ugh, he’s been milking his war record for his campaign, though lately there’ve been some online exposés that strongly imply he never actually saw much combat. Tony certainly doubts he’s ever flown a nuke by hand through a portal to the other end of the universe. He suppresses his shudder both at the memory and at Boynton’s attempt to bond with him, and makes a pretense at following along with what the Senator’s saying.

“…don’t know what it’s like to look evil in the eye, personally,” is what he’s saying, and Tony really does not need the campaign speech right now.

The heat of Loki close by his side reminds Tony of several occasions when he’s looked evil in the eye, and his pulse quickens. Either Loki senses that or she’s a mind-reader, because she puts one hand to the small of his back and ghosts her fingers across him with just enough pressure that he can feel it through the layers of his shirt and suit jacket.

_Stop,_ he thinks. He doesn’t want her drawing attention to herself, not here. And, _Don’t stop,_ he thinks.

“...delighted to have you on board,” the Senator says, finishing up his speech. “We’ve made some progress on the homeworld defense front, but your expertise—” and money, he doesn’t say, but Tony hears it anyway— “will be a boon.” He lowers his voice a little to add, “Especially when it comes to some of the finds we’ve made.”

And that, that right there is the closest Tony’s going to get to confirmation in a public venue of the Senator’s involvement in S.H.I.E.L.D.-related subterfuge. But it certainly sounds like he has access to alien tech, and knowing how thorough S.H.I.E.L.D. is in retrieving all such tech, the most likely explanation is that he has ties within the organization. Tony’s on the right track here. Looks like he’s going to be suffering through a bunch more nauseating xenophobic speeches, but he has an in. From the way Loki’s fingers have tensed on his back, he can tell she’s on the same page.

“I’d love to hear more about that sometime,” Tony says, with a shark-like version of his media smile.

The Senator nods, the business part of this conversation over, and takes Loki’s hand.  “And who is this lovely creature?”

Tony thinks ‘creature’ is close enough to ‘monster’ that there’s about to be bloodshed, but Loki just blushes prettily, and says, “Lucia D’Argento, Senator.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Miss D’Argento. Call me Clifford.” He presses her knuckles to his lips, and Tony can see that he lingers to brush his fingers along the inside of Loki’s wrist. When he’s done hitting on Tony’s date (for now), he looks up and says, “I’m getting some of the gents together for a game of poker later. Care to join us?”

Tony’s skin is crawling so much by this point that he almost misses that the Senator’s offering him an opening to follow up on their conversation, and wavers for a few moments between just saying no, and punching the Senator out. Lucky for him, Loki’s more on the ball than he is.

“It’s fine, darling,” she says, with a note of warning in her tone. “You go ahead. I’m sure I’ll find plenty to occupy myself with.”

“Ah… uh… yeah, of course. Sounds like fun!” TV smile.

“Nine o’clock in the salon, then.”

As the Senator walks away, Tony turns to Loki. “How can you stand that?”

“Pragmatism,” she replies with an elegant shrug. “Now stop feigning jealousy. It’s unnecessary, and distracts us from our purpose.”

Tony fidgets.

“By the nine, Stark—you really are jealous!”

He knows it’s ridiculous. He knows he has no claim to her. He knows that whatever is between them can hardly be described as a relationship. He knows that the Senator repulses her at least as much as he does Tony.

“No, I…” he protests weakly. “I don’t want him to hurt you.”

“Touching though your concern is,” she says archly, trailing one hand down his left arm, “might I remind you I am more than capable of defending myself?” Those slender fingers are suddenly gripping him around the bicep, squeezing with superhuman strength so tightly that he fears to move in case it breaks his arm.

“Right. Yeah.” His voice comes out hoarse and breathless. “God. Got it.” He looks down into her eyes, where humor and desire are breaking through the façade of irritation, and it’s all he can do to keep himself from grinding his hips forward into her.

“Later, Stark,” she purrs. “For now, let us remember what we came here to do.”

As he watches her walk away, he digs the fingers of his right hand into the fresh bruises on his arm, and nearly hisses with the pain of it. They, as much as her words, hold a promise.

_Remember what we came here to do,_ he thinks, shaking his head to bring himself back into the present. _Right._ What did she come here for, anyway? He thought she’d given up on Midgard, was going to leave them all to their fate. Right now she’s making her way through the crowd, which parts without acknowledgment, like nobody can see her. Some magic thing, presumably. She beelines for the stairs, and the last he sees of her is the swish of her ivory silk dress as she climbs to the second floor.

Someone whistles off to his right. “Dude, your date is hot. What’s a classy lady like that want with you anyway?”

“That’s what I keep asking myself,” he replies absently, before fully clueing in on who’s talking to him. “Oh, hey, Darcy.”

She’s popping an olive into her mouth, and he can tell that she knows it was Loki, but if she’s not going to talk about it, he sure as hell isn’t going to be the first to bring it up. She just looks at him with that even, knowing gaze, and chews.

“Some days you really remind me of Clint, you know that?” he says without thinking. It’s a compliment, actually: a normal-seeming person who sees more than they let on, and covers with jokes and irreverence.

She screws up her nose. “Gee, thanks!” But he can tell she’s flattered.

## Darcy

Tony being here is going to make this night a little easier to bear. It takes a lot to make her truly pissed, but she’s actually trembling right now.

She got introduced around a little, nobody ever quite saying that she was supposed to be Simon’s girlfriend, but she could tell a lot of them were drawing that conclusion. Which, good, if it gets them off his case for a while. What Simon needed was for her to be solid and non-judgmental, so she managed to hold it together for that, but now he’s gone off to mingle with some family friends, and it’s all hitting her at once. The memory of his face full of self-loathing makes her stomach twist.

Which is why it’s great that she’s found a distraction in the form of one playboy billionaire. Can he tell she’s upset? No, he’s too wrapped up in his Loki thing to notice. Speaking of which—what’s Loki doing here surrounded by people who’d hand her over to alien bounty hunters in a heartbeat? What’s Tony doing here, come to that?

“So, uh, you didn’t strike me as a Boynton supporter,” she says softly.

“Neither did you,” he volleys back, and they share a conspiratorial smile.

Cool. This is almost like having backup. Perhaps they can co-ordinate their—

She’s in mid-thought when it happens. There’s a deafening crack, and what looks like a hole torn in space appears in the middle of the room, where everyone’s mingling. The first thing that comes through is a huge, beefy guy swinging an axe as big as a human, and roaring some kind of battle cry that may or may not consist of words.

Darcy’s already in motion, shoving Tony behind a table, and diving down after him, drawing her sidearm out of its thigh holster. What, you think she’d go to a shindig on enemy turf without a weapon? She used to take her taser to frat parties, for God’s sake.

By the time she’s pushing over the table to form a makeshift barricade, scattering the buffet across the floor, another figure is stepping out of the portal. Tall, blonde, Asgardian clothing… and familiar somehow. Maybe Darcy used to have a Barbie that looked like that when she was a kid?

Asgard Barbie puts her hand on Conan the Barbarian’s arm, and he lets her lower it, along with the ax. “Patience, Skurge.”

She raises her voice to address the party guests, who are variously hunkering down behind furniture; standing frozen and staring in the middle of the dancefloor; and puffing up their chests in a show of bravery. Darcy’s pretty sure that last group is soon going to be the deadest.

“Midgardians! I have no quarrel with you. Give me the fugitive and I shall have my comrade here—” she gestures at Conan— “satisfy his bloodlust elsewhere. Otherwise, well…”

The huge guy bares his teeth in something that can’t quite be described as a smile.

Senator Boynton decides to step out of the crowd, a stern look on his face. Darcy risks a glance at Tony and sees he’s pinching the bridge of his nose in exactly the way she wants to. Silently, she flicks the safety off her gun and starts to edge along the table to flank Barbie and Conan.

“You’ve got some nerve,” Boynton is saying, sounding a lot like he’s scolding a child.

_So very dead,_ Darcy thinks. She’s… actually not sure how she feels about that prospect. It’d certainly be satisfying to see the Senator get what’s coming to him, but aside from the moral concerns that chirp quietly in the back of her mind, he’s still her best lead.

“This is our world, and you have no right to come here making demands. Now—” Barbie waves one hand and he cuts off with a quiet, strangled sound. His fingers scrabble at his throat, and he mouths words, but no sound comes out.

There are several clicks around the room as security guards in suits, five or six of them, step forward with their guns leveled at the intruders. Barbie rolls her eyes, makes a gripping gesture, twists, and the guards’ gun hands all twist until there are some sickening cracks, their grips release, and the guns clatter onto the ground. They skitter across the tiled floor to lie at her feet. She stoops and picks one up, turns it over idly in her hands.

“Quaint,” she says, “but these puny mortal weapons would have no effect on me.”

Good thing Darcy’s puny mortal weapon is enhanced with S.H.I.E.L.D.’s salvaged alien tech, then. She smiles to herself as Barbie keeps monologuing.

“I’ll ask once more, and after that my friend here is going to do some violence. It’s up to you where he directs it. Now, where. Is. The. Fugitive?”

She releases Senator Boynton’s voice long enough for him to blurt out, “I have no idea who you’re talking about, and even if I did—”

“Oh, I’m sure if you did, you’d be happy enough to hand me over.” That’s a new voice, at the top of the stairs. A smooth, menacing, male voice with an accent that sounds kind of British.

All eyes turn to Loki, except Darcy and Tony, who are looking at each other as if to ask, _What the hell’s he doing?_ He could be long gone from here, so why’s he hanging around in the home of one enemy to face off against another?

Loki begins a slow saunter down the stairs. Gotta hand it to the guy, he knows how to make an entrance.

Barbie sucks in a breath. “Loki,” she seethes.

Darcy takes advantage of the distraction to dash to a better position, keeping low.

Loki inclines his head in mockery of a greeting. “So very good to see you again, Amora. I felt certain that after last time you had learned your lesson, and that never again would I have the pleasure of this tedious little dance.”

“Last time? When you stabbed me, stole from me, and stranded me in Svartalfheim?”

“Quite so.”

“You should have known better than to send me there. You think you are the only one who knows the secret paths? It was child’s play to escape that place and find my allies—”

Loki snorts. “Your allies have ever been as faithless as you, Amora.”

“—who will never let you get away with what you’ve done...”

Amora’s working herself up into quite the froth of rage now, and this is the best opening Darcy’s going to get, so she pops her head up, levels her gun, and fires on the exhale.

Oh, she’s good, more than worthy of her training; the bullet flies with deadly precision at Amora’s head.

She’s good, but Amora’s better. Either it’s superhuman reflexes, or magic, but somehow the bullet that was on a perfect trajectory to her brain just manages to graze Amora’s cheek. She whirls around to pin Darcy with a glare.

“Crap,” Darcy sighs.

Green tendrils of magic snake around her and drag her out of cover, the tips of her toes trailing along the floor and threatening to leave her shoes behind.

Amora drags her within arm’s reach, grabs her face in an iron grip and tilts it up to study it. “You,” she hisses.

“…Me?”

It’s then that Darcy realizes what’s familiar about these two: the photo on her phone that she doesn’t remember taking. She blinks back the recognition that threatens to show on her face, and opts to keep playing innocent.

“Always sticking your nose in where it’s not wanted.”

“Uh, no,” Darcy forces out, even though she can hardly move her mouth. “Well, I mean, yeah, I do do that, but I have no clue what you’re even talking about right now.”

Over Amora’s shoulder, Darcy can see that some of the human party guests are taking this opportunity to sneak out of the room to safety. Skurge is distracted enough by this little show to take his eyes off Loki, who stalks down the stairs silently. Loki, however, has his eyes on something out of sight—or, Darcy realizes, some _one_. He’s looking at where she last saw Tony, with a question on his face.

She fervently hopes that the question is, S _hould I rescue that human?_ and that Tony’s answer is a resounding _yes._

There’s a lurch, and Amora falters. At first, Darcy thinks she’s being thrown under the bus with Amora, because the grip on her face doesn’t let up, and she’s certain they’re both going down. But at the very last moment, as Barbie and Conan fall through a portal, Darcy’s yanked back by an invisible force, maybe a little harder than necessary, but she’ll take the indignity of landing in a heap of bruises with her cocktail dress all askew over being stranded on another planet with Amora any day.

She hasn’t finished struggling to her feet and smoothing out her dress—not to mention figuring out what happened to that other shoe—when she’s grabbed by another vice-like grip. This time it’s Loki, hands curled around her upper arms not tight enough to hurt but enough to convince her it’s not worth trying to get away.

“What did she mean?” he says, urgently. “How did she know you?”

“Dude, I wish I knew!”

He touches two fingers to her temple, and frowns in concentration. Then, his expression clears up, like something suddenly makes sense.

“Care to share?” she asks.

Loki doesn’t reply in words, just keeps up the contact with her head and the intense glare. After a couple of seconds something unblocks, like a dam bursting, and in rush the images, sensations, and snippets of speech: A spark of magic that zaps Darcy in the head; wishing for a rescue from Thor and wondering why it never comes; Amora sighing, “Ugh, these mortals are so tedious;” Amora slinking up to some Asgardian dude with glazed eyes; “…to have Mephisto in my debt for doing me a service;” “Once we have Loki, we will take him to the Lord of Hell;” ax-guy with a hunger in his eyes, running one finger along the edge of his blade…

Wait. Back up.

_Once we have Loki, we will take him to the Lord of Hell…_

She’s still blinking dazedly, but as soon as Loki sees that his mojo took effect, he presses something into her hand. “Stark may find this useful,” he murmurs. “Tell him I found it upstairs.”

He lets her go abruptly, turns to the Senator, who doesn’t quite seem to have gotten his voice back, and makes a bow that she thinks is supposed to be insultingly shallow. Not exactly like she’s up on the etiquette of bowing.

“Senator Boynton, it’s been a pleasure.”

“Hey…” she says, taking a step toward him, but he turns on his heel and disappears, leaving her with more questions than answers. She uncurls her hand to look at what he gave her, and it’s a sleek piece of tech, probably some kind of communication device, but it’s hard to tell for sure because the symbols are in some kind of alien script.

She looks around at the chaos Amora’s made of the room. Some people are crying, some attending to the injured security guards, some trying to set things back in order. Senator Boynton is trying to take control, but without a voice all he can do is point at stuff.

“Annoying, isn’t it?” says a voice beside her.

“What is?” She turns, and finds Tony, hands in pockets, looking at the spot where Loki stood before he vanished. “Oh.” Oh! So they’re not doing the dance any more. That was Tony basically admitting to hanging out with Loki… for certain values of ‘hanging out’.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“Huh?” She’s already forgetting the trauma of the last few minutes, because as she runs over it all again in her mind, something way more urgent has come to light.

_We will take him to the Lord of Hell…_

She remembers crouching behind the trailer, remembers feeling like that was a fate she wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy. And, at this point, is Loki even her worst enemy? Obviously he’s been helping Tony in some way, and he did just rescue her from Amora, so things must be more complicated than that. She feels like Tony needs to know. Tony, who is still looking at her like he thinks she has a head injury, which maybe he does, because, oh right, he asked her a question and she’s spaced out.

“Don’t worry about me.” She waves a hand in a way that she hopes is reassuring. “I just realized—Tony, I think I know something about Amora’s ally, and you’re really not gonna like it….”


	19. Last Call for Sin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smut! Non-violent smut and pillow talk that's almost sweet! Well, as sweet as these two are going to get.

## Tony

Tony’s shirt is kind of uncomfortably bunched up inside the armor, because he was in the shower when he got the call.

Well, he was in the shower when Jarvis alerted him to a bizarre magical fluctuation that sputtered out right away, and he was already pulling underwear up his still-damp legs when the actual call came through. It was intermittent, breaking up as if something was interfering with the signal, but the identity of the caller was immediately apparent.

“Stark!”

“Hey, snowflake. To what do I owe the honor? I just registered this huge magical blip—was that you? Because, gotta tell you, didn’t look good from here. You in trouble or something? Oh, please tell me I get to be your knight in gold-and-red armor. You’d make a great damsel in distress.” This was a new one; Loki had never called him before. He didn’t even have a… “Wait, you have a phone?”

“Stark, be serious.”

“You know me, serious as a heart attack.” He glances down at the glowing circle in the center of his chest. Yep, he’s one continuous heart attack….

“Your S.H.I.E.L.D.—”

“I don’t have a shield. You must be confusing me with the Capsicle, unless you mean the quasi-government spooks with the sticks up their asses, in which case—”

_“Stark!”_

“Wow, geez, yeah. What’s gotten under your skin?”

“Your S.H.I.E.L.D. has discovered—”

And that’s when the signal gave out, and even Jarvis was having trouble figuring out the blocked number that originated the call, which is how Tony finds himself in the armor in only his sweatpants and a muscle shirt (and without his specially designed under-armor bodysuit, there’s an unpleasant degree of chafing, thankyouverymuch), still kind of damp, and en route to the co-ordinates of that magical surge.

He’s on a business trip in Atlanta, which is how come he only has the suitcase suit to hand, so he’s not familiar with the city, and it takes him a bit longer than normal to pin down the signal, high up in an anonymous-looking apartment building. He lands on the roof and looks around, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary. He probably got spotted arriving here, but he should make the most of this temporary lull before he gets swarmed by fake-S.H.I.E.L.D. goons, so he walks as quietly as he can in the armor and yanks open the door to the stairwell.

Something pulls him in odd directions as he steps through the doorway, a familiar feeling just like—

He lurches to a halt, only to be faced with Loki’s amused smirk, and a glass being held out to him.

Just like being dragged through a portal.

“What the hell?” He turns, gaping at the room he finds himself in. It’s similar to Loki’s hideout from before, all dark wood and high ceilings and eerie light, but instead of the tall bookshelves and ornate armchairs, this room is dominated by the large four-poster bed. Loki’s bedroom? He’s in Loki’s bedroom.

There are no doors, not even the one he just walked through.

But Loki’s talking, answering his question.

“It’s a drink, Stark. I was under the impression you were familiar with them?”

“No, asshole, you told me you were under attack by S.H.I.E.L.D. Where are they?”

“I said no such thing. I merely indicated that they are on my trail, and any conclusions you leapt to were entirely your own. Now, drink?” He holds up the glass again, pointedly.

“So let me get this straight, you got me out of the shower and rushing over here in my pajamas, just to offer me a drink?” Even as he complains, however, he’s flipping the switch that retracts the suit into its neat little case. Starting with a gauntlet so he can take that damn drink because he can already tell he’s going to need it. He tips the glass back, letting the burn of the liquid as it slides down his throat dull the burn of the anger that he’s feeling.

“Not just for that, no.” Loki stalks toward him, with a look of such heat and intensity that Tony’s knees nearly buckle. “I thought perhaps we might pick up where we were forced to leave off when last we met.”

Loki’s all up in his personal space right now, his fingers ghosting over the skin on Tony’s left arm as though he can still see the fingerprint bruises that he left there.

Tony swallows. He feels like he should put up a token protest, set some boundaries, even if he knows Loki’s going to trample over them without a second thought. “That was a month ago, princess! You drop off the face of the planet for weeks, and then get me over here on false pretenses for a—for a booty call?”

Loki quirks a questioning eyebrow, takes the empty glass and places it gently to one side without breaking eye contact.

“Never mind. It’s just… It’s cute that you made up an excuse and all, but you could have just asked me here, you know?” His voice sounds way hoarser and less authoritative than he’s going for.

“And you would have come?” Loki pushes one knee between his legs, trapping him against the wall. “Into the home of an enemy?”

Tony runs one hand up his neck to tangle in his hair. “Is that what you are? An enemy?”

The breath that Loki sucks in is almost as ragged as Tony feels. They’re panting into each other’s mouths, breathing the same air, drawing out that weightless moment before crashing their lips together. Tony’s fingers tighten in that long black hair, and he’s rewarded with an obscene groan against his mouth, drawn unwillingly from Loki’s throat.

"No, Stark, I am not your enemy.”

Tony chooses to ignore the slight emphasis on ‘your’, in favor of wrapping his other arm around Loki’s waist and pulling them flush together, their hips bucking and grinding against each other involuntarily.

“Perhaps,” says Loki in between kisses as he makes his way slowly down Tony’s chest, “there are ways I can make up for the inconvenience.”

Then Loki's knees hit the ground, and insistent fingers work under the elastic of his waist band. Loki nuzzles his face into Tony’s _suddenly_ _very interested_ crotch, and oh fuck there’s a god kneeling to him, and all the air seems to have been sucked out of the room. Loki mouths at him, dampening the fabric, and Tony wants… oh, he wants…

A groan escapes his lips, and suddenly his sweatpants and underwear are yanked down in one swift motion. Loki just kneels there for a few moments, his lips an inch or two away, letting the hot breath ghost over him.

“Fuck, Loki, don’t tease!”

And he looks down, half thinking Loki’s going to make him beg for it, but as soon as they lock eyes, Loki wets his lips sensuously with the tip of his tongue, parts them, and swallows him down in one slow, firm slide.

                                                                                                                                                                              

Loki begins to move, swallowing around him, and it’s so intense that Tony’s knees buckle and it’s only the hands around his thighs that keep him from falling. Instinctively, he puts his hands on Loki’s head, not with any force, just for the contact, and runs his fingers through that silky hair.

The wet, insistent heat stills, and _Oh, shit,_ he thinks. Loki probably takes that as an insult. But instead of pulling away in rage, Loki makes eye contact again, and leans into the touch. Very carefully and deliberately, eyes on Tony’s the entire time, he slides his hands down Tony’s thighs and clasps them behind his own back, and—oh god—Loki’s just handing him control, just like that, and Tony’s fingers tighten in his hair just thinking of it.

He’s rewarded with a low moan in the back of Loki’s throat, and god but that feels good, and he starts to thrust, gently at first, and then there are more moans, and his brain stutters and his fingers clench tighter, yanking on a fistful of hair to get Loki’s face exactly where he wants it, and Loki’s eyes are still locked on his, except when they flutter shut, and—Jesus!

“Oh, god, your mouth! Your filthy fucking mouth!”

Loki gives a helpless groan, almost a whimper.

“You’re getting off on this as much as I am, aren’t you?” he growls, amazed he can still form words.

He fucks harder into Loki’s throat. Something about the idea of his being the kind of person to get off on giving head makes him even hotter. The god’s strong enough to break him, any time he feels like it, but he doesn't. It feels strangely intimate, the biggest sign of trust Loki’s ever given him.

And now he’s started talking, he can’t stop. “You like being used, don’t you? I bet you could come just like this. I wouldn’t even have to touch you—Jesus! Oh god, you keep that up and I’m not going to last!”

Loki moans and bucks, like he didn’t mean to, like he can’t help it. He slides one hand inside his own pants, works at his own crotch, and the muscles of his throat convulse. Tony gives one, two more thrusts, and he spills. Loki shudders, swallowing repeatedly, and follows Tony over the edge. Finally, he pulls off with a soft _pop_ , an obscene dribble escaping at the corner of his mouth. His pupils are blown, and he’s panting as Tony slides down the wall and leans in to taste himself on Loki’s lips.

Loki slumps forward, and Tony catches him and maneuvers him to sit against the wall, and it’s almost— _almost_ —like cuddling, not that he would admit that if his life depended on it. Quite realistically, his life does depend on not saying that, so for once he keeps his mouth shut and just sits there while they both catch their breath.

Once the blood flow to his brain has started up again, he realizes just how many questions he has. “Are we still on Earth?” Okay, that wasn’t actually the most pressing one, but it’s somewhere to start.

“Hmm?” Oh, and Loki’s delicious like this, hazy in the afterglow, with his guard down enough that he’s lost some of the sharp edges. He’s not even pretending to follow Tony’s mental leaps.

“This place. You live here?”

“Yes.”

“And is it on Earth?”

Loki rolls over onto his side, props his head on his hand to look at Tony. “Is this an abduction, you mean?” Only Loki can do _playful with menacing undertones_ this well.

“Hadn’t crossed my mind until you said that.”

Something flickers across Loki’s face before he manages to wrangle his features under control. “So trusting.”

Tony’s pulled up short by that, because the fact is he _does_ trust Loki, at least in some ways. The god’s had more than enough opportunities to kill him. For a while, he thought it was maybe just that Loki wanted to avoid breaking his toy, but the way he keeps showing up wherever Tony is, keeps drawing him out, the way he lured him here for some kind of twisted date…

He covers, as usual, with flippancy. “No, I was more thinking that if we’re halfway across the universe I wouldn’t mind sightseeing.”

Loki snorts. “You believe you are ready for the wonders of the other Realms?”

“Question is, are they ready for me? C’mon, snowflake, don’t lie—you’d love to let me loose on them.”

From Loki’s smile, he would.

“You said you were leaving Earth, but you keep…” _You keep coming back for me._ He clears his throat. “Thought you’d written us off.”

“I still believe you are dooming yourself.” Loki won’t meet his eyes.

 _So you’re trying to get as much of me as you can before I die?_ he thinks. It occurs to him for the first time that perhaps Loki’s as desperately addicted to this as he is.

“You are reckless, and foolhardy. But if there is anyone in the Nine Realms who can overcome the Titan, it would be you.”

“Watch and learn, Rudolph.”

“I intend to be very far away when the assault occurs. As should you. Would you not prefer to see those sights?”

“After,” he says, and it lingers between them like a promise.

He clears his throat again, uncomfortable at the intimacy.

“So listen, ah, I’ve been thinking.”

“Oh?” And it’s a sign of how much Loki’s lowered his guard that he’s not making cracks about Tony’s puny mortal thoughts right now.

“You’ve got a lot of people after you, and that has to suck. And many of those people are pretty definitely in the villain camp, so it wouldn’t exactly be a conflict of interest for me to, ah… help you get them out of the way.”

Loki’s schooling his face so that it stays carefully neutral, but there’s a lot going on under the surface, even if Tony can’t quite tell what it is.

Tony rushes on. “I know you have this whole thing where you want to be self-reliant, and I know you don’t technically _need_ my help….” (Okay, that part’s a lie, because Tony thinks Loki totally does need his help and is just too proud to ask for it.) “But I would, you know.”

Loki’s face is closing up again, and that really hurts to see.

"If it's a debt thing,” Tony rushes on, “if you don’t want to owe me a favor, you can sit down with me and tell me what to expect from Than—the Titan’s attack. Number of ships, type of troops, tactics, etc.”

“What would be the point?”

“Consider it a request from a dying man.”

Loki studies him for a few moments, before giving a brief nod.

Oh, this is going to be _awesome._

***

“Bet you’re glad you left this with me now.” Tony grins as he makes some final tweaks to the tangle of wires and circuits connected to the thing on the tripod.

“Indeed. Rather than an oversight caused by your propensity to induce mind-numbing rage,” Loki deadpans, “it was a deliberate ploy on my part.”

"C’mon, snowflake, it’s not rage I numb your mind with—admit it!” Tony sidles up to the trickster with a suggestive leer in his eyes, and runs one hand up Loki’s chest.

Loki grabs his wrist and removes the offending hand from his person. “Are your interminable adjustments complete yet?”

“Oh, it’s all business today, is it? Fine, yes, I’m ready to fire it up.”

As plans go, it’s not his most elaborate. But he figures he’s got Loki for that, if it’s needed. No, today it goes something like this:

  1. Make a big magical beacon out of Mephisto’s cosmic containment stone thingy.
  2. Wait for Mephisto to show up and demand it back.
  3. Let Loki take him out, thereby getting some well-earned revenge, and removing one dangerous piece from the board.
  4. Profit.



Admittedly he’s still a bit hazy on step 3. Last time Loki went up against this guy, the results were not pretty, but Loki says it’s under control, so he guesses it’s under control.

The magic web glove, it turned out after some poking and prodding, was something like a battery that’s been charged too many times. You can plug it into the wall outlet, and power will flow through it, but it doesn’t actually hold a charge. Now for ‘wall outlet’ substitute ‘micro arc reactor’, and that’s the general gist of what Tony’s currently fine-tuning. It’s not pretty, but it’ll get the job done.

He pulls on his gauntlet and flips down the helmet’s visor before hitting the go button, because he’ll be damned if he faces down some demon lord from another realm without his full armor. He takes a few paces back to the trees, just in case there’s any taking cover that needs to happen. Is this clearing big enough? Far enough from civilization? Well, too late for second thoughts.

Nothing happens at first. Sure, the arc reactor is humming and glowing just like it’s meant to, but so far there’s no sign that the conduit is working. Maybe saving Loki’s life was its last hurrah, and now it’s completely burned out.

He moves to double check the setup, but gets stopped by Loki’s hand on his arm.

“Stark.”

Tony follows Loki’s gaze back to the improvised science-to-magic converter, but it still looks inert to him. Maybe Loki’s picking up something he can’t see.

No, wait—

It’s just a faint luminescence inside the stone, all but invisible in the light even on a gray day like this, but then it’s building exponentially and the thing is rattling enough that he thinks it’d shake itself to the ground if it weren’t clamped to the tripod, and then it _is_ shaking, and he has a bad feeling about this.

Loki yanks him into cover just as the white light blasts through them.

Why the hell are his science/magic experiments always blowing up? Hmm, never mind. Maybe the answer’s in the question.

He pushes himself to his feet, not too bruised thanks to his armor. Loki’s brushing leaves from his coat haughtily, which means he’s fine.

The same can’t be said for the equipment, though. Tony picks his way back into the clearing, which is now littered with chunks of earth and broken branches. Somewhere in this mess are the remains of his experiment. He finds the arc reactor first, because it’s still glowing underneath that sloppy heap of mulch, and after a minute a curl of smoke alerts him to where the web glove is about to set fire to a drift of dry leaves. And that is well outside the clearing, so obviously that thing got some air when it blew up. Shame he was diving to safety at the time, ‘cause he’d love to have seen that.

“Hey Jarv?”

“Sir?”

“You get all that?”

“The data, yes. However, the fixed camera was destroyed during the experiment.”

He sighs. Yeah, everything but the arc reactor and the web glove is toast. “Well, looks like I’ll have to take these back to the tower and have a rethink about how to modulate the energy output—”

“Sir, Doctor Banner is calling.”

“What, now? He can wait.”

Ten seconds after Jarvis ignores the call, Bruce tries again. On the fifth or sixth attempt, Tony gives in.

“Guess I won’t get any peace until I answer this. Put him through. Audio only.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Kinda busy here, Kermit.”

“Tony, there’s been some kind of Event.” He says it with an audible capital E, too, which must mean something Avengers- or supervillain-related.

“And I’m guessing it can’t wait until I’m done here?”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. wants you on this. Why, what’s so important?”

“Just, you know, working on something.”

“Oh? You’re not in your workshop.”

“I’m not?” How does he know that? “I mean, right, I’m not. Just needed a bit more space for this one.”

“I, uh, only went down there to get my notes from the SAP analysis, and I happened to notice the detector was, um, well, going nuts.”

“Right, so some big magical event then? Send me the co-ordinates and I’ll…” he trails off, thinking about big magical events that happened in the last few minutes. Crap. Caught out by his own technology.

“We’re already in the air, ETA five minutes,” says Bruce. “You can meet us there.”

Yeah, easier than he knows.

Bruce disconnects as soon as Jarvis confirms he’s received the co-ordinates, and Tony flips up his visor and turns to Loki, wishing he’d picked a spot much further from the city to do this.

“We’re about to have some guests. You should make yourself scarce before that happens; I’ll clear up here.” Not that there’s much cleanup to do—nothing recognizable is left in the clearing. He’ll blast any larger bits he can find, just in case.

“Guests?” says Loki, with menace and suspicion.

“Avengers. S.H.I.E.L.D. You know, your fan club.”

He strides over and grabs Tony by the throat hard enough to be a reminder that, yes, he can as it turns out crumple the metal of the more lightweight suits with his bare hands. It’d probably take a while to actually get strangled to death, but Tony hopes not to have to test that.

“Stark, if I find that you have—”

“Really? We’re doing this?” He’s hoarse because of all the strangling, but pissed enough to yell anyway. “Of course I didn’t tell them. One, I hope I’ve earned a bit of trust from you by now. Two, I’ll be on their shit list as well if they find out I was involved. Last, and most important, I’m tipping you off now so you can _get the hell out of here_.”

Loki stares at him a few moments longer before releasing his grip.

“Thank you! Jesus!” Tony makes a show of rubbing his gauntleted hand to his armored throat, not that it helps or anything.

He starts stalking toward the clearing to get on with his cleanup project, before realizing—

“Why aren’t you leaving?”

Loki’s frozen still, with an odd look on his face, like he’s hearing something in the distance.

“What? What is it?”

“You should go,” Loki hisses, and begins slowly circling the clearing in a combat stance, staff in his right hand and dagger in his left.

“Yeah, yeah, I plan to. Clean up, fly a mile or two out east, and then come in as if I’m just arriving. We take a look around, see there’s nothing doing, everyone goes home. C’mon, Rudolph, you’re the one who’s got enemies on the way.”

“More than you know….” Loki murmurs.

“What?”

But he can barely get the question out before there’s a curl of something like smoke around him, tinged red against in the washed-out gray.

“Stark!” Loki barrels into him, and they both roll into a drift of leaves as the smoke solidifies into something—no, some _one_ —who would have appeared in just the right place to grab Tony before he knew what hit him.

Tony doesn’t mess around, just uses his hand repulsors to blast himself upright, and hovers between the trees, all weapons aimed at the demonic-looking figure in the clearing. He sighs. Of course it would turn out that their bait worked, right when they can’t afford to get into a fight.

“And here I thought it was a bit early for Halloween,” he says. “No, really, what are you supposed to be?”

The guy is like a living cliché of the devil. Red skin, demonically glowing eyes, hair sculpted into the shape of horns.

The demon ignores him and zeroes in on the other person present.

“Loki,” he growls, and damn, even for a demonic embodiment of evil that’s a lot of malice.

Loki, of course, goes for mocking and goading. “Mephisto, what a pleasure it is to see you. Unfortunately, I have pressing business elsewhere….”

Demon dude isn’t in a playful mood. “You have something of mine. Return it, and I will leave you only half as dead as I did when last we met.”

Actually, it’s Tony who has the containment unit. He tries not to glance down at the compartment where it’s stashed inside his suit.

Loki laughs, and suddenly it’s coming from everywhere. The clearing is full of Lokis, all mocking, all armed with viciously glinting daggers.

They run at Mephisto, and it’s on. The immortal beings dive and lunge and flip in a lethal dance. Tony can’t spend much time appreciating it, because he’s zooming around trying to get an angle that won’t hit Loki (or one of the things that might be Loki; he lost track right away). He gets off a few blasts, but they hardly seem to make an impression on Mephisto.

Suddenly, Steve’s urgent voice is coming over the comm in his helmet. “Iron Man, what are you doing engaging solo? Stand down until we get there!”

Shit, shit, shit. This could all go to hell real quick if he doesn’t have a good answer. “Sorry, Cap, didn’t want to miss this opportunity. Besides, they’re mostly ignoring me.”

“So far!” Steve gives a long-suffering sigh. “Just let them fight each other and try not to get killed before we get there.”

The quinjet swoops in low over the battlefield, dropping Steve and Bruce—who’s mid-transformation even as he falls—into the melee.

“We need to focus fire on the demon guy,” says Tony. “I’ve been watching, and I think he’s even more dangerous than Loki.”

Steve gives him a look. “I’ll be the judge of that,” he says, but he does enter the fight by sending his shield spinning at Mephisto’s head.

Tony wasn’t lying; it’s soon evident that Loki is outmatched, or would be if he were fighting alone. Mephisto takes on all four of them—Loki, Iron Man, Hulk, and Captain America—without losing much ground. Loki, who’s taking the brunt of his fire, is injured. Trying not to show it, but Tony can tell from the way he’s favoring his right side that something has happened to his left hand. The daggers are still flying with ruthless accuracy, but the staff is blocking less effectively. He’s only got three clones up right now, not the ten or twelve he started with. It’s obvious that he’s tiring.

Tony roars and hits Mephisto with everything he’s got. The chest beam manages to knock the demon back a few paces, the first real effect Tony’s had. While he’s staggering from that blow, Hulk knocks him into a tree. That would’ve killed any regular human, but Mephisto is getting up. Slowly, and wiping blood off his face with the back of his hand, but he’s getting up.

Tony’s so busy fighting that he doesn’t realize the quinjet has landed until Mephisto’s hit with an explosive arrow and 30,000 volts from one of Natasha’s Widow’s Bites at one time. That staggers him more than anything in the fight so far, and Loki takes the opportunity to close with him. Tony remembers the first iteration of this plan: _Step 3. Let Loki take him out._ That seems ridiculously optimistic now; Tony’s revising it to _Get Loki out alive_.

Well, if he’s going to do that, he’d better do it fast. Mephisto sends out a burst of magic, and Loki’s final clones fizzle out. With the real Loki exposed, the demon lord hits him again and again with vicious blasts, stalking ever closer, and Loki’s on his knees, struggling to lift his head enough to look his antagonist in the eye.

“Cap…” There’s an anxious strain in his voice, but Tony almost doesn’t care if he gives himself away. If they don’t intervene in the next two seconds, Loki will be toast, and there won’t be anything to give away.

Steve shoots an odd look his way; he’s certain he’ll be answering uncomfortable questions later. Then gives the order over the comm, and all the Avengers rally to him.

“Co-ordinated assault on—ah, the red guy. Everyone, fire!”

With their combined firepower, with the Hulk beating his enormous fists into the ground to knock Mephisto flying, it’s clear this won’t be such an easy fight for the demon. He releases the trickster, letting him slump to the ground in a tangle of green and black.

“It seems I must be patient,” he says, and twists back into red smoke, which curls out of the clearing and into the trees.

Tony fires off after him, but it only takes a couple of seconds to realize he’s the only one.

“Guys… Little help here?”

“Stand down, Iron Man. That guy’s an unknown quantity. We can’t go after him right now.”

“Steve, are you crazy? He’s getting away!”

“Let’s just deal with the task at hand, okay? Then we’ll make plans for the next time we see him.”

“The task at—? Oh, shit!”

He turns around and gets back into the clearing just as the flood of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents comes out of the treeline. Okay, so realistically there’s probably only eight or so, but Loki’s in such bad shape that that’s all it takes to slap the magic-dampening shackles on him and start hauling him off to the quinjet. He manages to avoid the indignity of being physically hauled, but only by scrabbling at the ground with his feet until he can just about keep up with his captors.

Just when Tony thought it couldn’t get any worse, he recognizes one of the agents. It’s that Boynton kid, the Senator’s son. The one he’s pretty sure is in deep with the group that wants to hand Loki over to Thanos.

He just stands there, helpless to intervene. He’s telling himself that if he keeps his cover, if he doesn’t tip them off to his vested interest, then he might stand a chance of getting Loki out, but part of his mind is calling him a coward as he watches his… his… what is Loki to him anyway? As he watches his lover get dragged away for incarceration and torture.

Loki’s eyes, bruised and unfocused, finally lock onto him, and he’s sure that Loki can see him even through his armor. There’s a desperation in them that he’s never seen before, that Loki is usually far too proud and in-control to display. It’s as overt a plea for help as he can imagine Loki making.

“Stark,” he mouths, as he’s dragged away in chains and consigned to the back of the S.H.I.E.L.D. quinjet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I'm sorry?
> 
> We're heading into the final section now. Things are coming to a head!


	20. Turn the Lights On

## Darcy

“Okay baby, talk to mama,” she says. Then screws up her face. “Ew, that was gross. Never saying that again.”

She hasn’t laid a hand directly on the scepter since the Gollum incident with Kate, but she needs more from it. She knows it’s keeping secrets from her, whispering hints into her ear at night. She knows it holds a clue to something. But she can’t get to the bottom of that without taking a risk.

Her hand is less than half an inch from its golden handle now, and the pressure is building inside her head like there’s a swarm of bees buzzing in there, trying to get out. It’s both alarming and a huge relief when she finally closes her hand around the shaft, but she has no time to think about that before being bombarded by a maelstrom of images.

The images finally resolve into a huge, terrifying… guy? Yeah, let’s go with that for now. Alien guy. This must be the Titan dude, all purple in the face and not from anger, though she can tell the exact moment he senses her, and all of a sudden he really is angry.

While she’s making Lord of the Rings comparisons, this is kind of like the time when the cute hobbit dude looks in the crystal ball and the angry eyeball notices him. Seriously, did nobody in that world consider that maybe all their evil sorcerer problems could be solved with a tankerful of eyedrops?

Anyway, not the point right now.

After a few moments of panic-induced mental babbling, she realizes that, while the purple-faced alien guy might feel like someone’s watching, he hasn’t exactly… _seen_ her. He just knows someone’s picked up the scepter, which belongs to him and none other! No mortal hands shall desecrate its—whoa. That was kind of overwhelming.

Okay, let’s think this through. She’s remotely mind-melding with a pissed-off alien, whose feelings she can sense somehow. One of those feelings is… fear. Interesting. Why would some all-powerful alien be afraid of a mere mortal? She probes into that a bit deeper.

Somewhere in the flood, there’s an idea that keeps reoccurring: the gem shattering, the scepter splintering, its energy leaking out and dissipating into the universe. The idea is a terrifying one—she feels vulnerable, weakened, without its power. She calms herself. This is a far-fetched prospect, she knows. The mortals are puny and primitive; they do not possess the strength or the tools to destroy a thing that she made.

Not unless—no. It is a foolish thought. The mineral is rare throughout the universe, almost unheard of on Earth. The chances of a mortal possessing some, _and_ coming close enough to the scepter are… infinitesimal. Not enough to factor into her plans.

Darcy is pulled suddenly back into herself by a high-pitched trilling. It feels like being sucked down a long tube, and she feels strung-out and dazed at the end of it. Her hand releases the scepter of its own accord, and jumps back several inches as if burned.

She knows. She _knows_.

The Titan is vulnerable, and she knows exactly what to do about it.

But first, there’s an irritating chirping going on, and she has to deal with that. Oh, right, a cell phone. Her cell phone.

“Hello?” She didn’t even look at the caller ID, she’s so out of it.

“Darcy?”

The voice is distant and panicked, and it takes her a few moments to place it.

“…Tony?”

“Yeah, it’s me. Look, can you make it over to the tower? Like, now? Something urgent has come up, and I need everybody in on it.”

Oh, wow. Is this when the shit hits the fan? She’s not ready for the shit to hit the fan.

“Yeah, ‘course. I’m on my way.”

## Tony

                                                                                                                                  

They file into the workshop with various expressions of curiosity and skepticism. He asked them down here because it’s his turf, he thought it’d make it easier on him, but now the room is too full and he wants them out. Really, it wasn’t made to hold this many people in addition to the robots and the suits and the half-built projects, and—he takes a deep breath. No time for anxiety right now.

Steve and Natasha take up positions near the wall, he at parade rest, and she leaning against a pillar with her arms folded across her chest. Darcy, Clint, and the girl he hasn’t met yet (Kate, he thinks her name is) array themselves along an empty bench, Clint perching atop it with a bag of pretzels that he occasionally remembers to offer to the other two. Bruce and Jane, with Thor hovering at her shoulder, make a beeline for the objects he has laid out on the bench next to him.

“Ah-ah!” he says, swatting Jane’s hand away from one of the more mysterious-looking ones. “I mean, yeah, you’re right, that’s the one you’re totally gonna dig, but maybe let me explain it first? Trust me on this.”

“Come on now, Tony,” says Bruce with that lopsided smile of his. “You know scientists are like big kids; if you tell us to leave something alone…”

“Just for now, I promise.” He lifts up his head to take in the whole group. It’s been a while since they all got together, and his fake grin eases into a more natural one when he looks at them. This is going to be okay, really it is. This is his team, and when he tells them the headline news he knows they will have his back, even if he keeps back certain details.

“Right. Well. First of all, Jarvis?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Secure blackout for the next thirty minutes, okay? Turn off cameras, turn off mics, don’t record anything.”

“Very well, sir.” Jarvis sounds unconvinced, but like the good boy he is, he complies. Tony sees a couple of little LEDs up near the ceiling go dead.

“Okay, we need to keep this between ourselves. You’ll understand why in a minute.” He clears his throat, unsure of where to start. “I know we face supervillains and magic robots and stuff all the time, but this one isn’t your common-or-garden world-threatening incident.”

“What isn’t?” says Steve.

“Yeah, spit it out!” Clint heckles, and Tony sees the moment where he considers throwing a pretzel, decides it would be a waste, and pops it into his mouth instead.

“Just trying to impress you with the gravity of the situation, Katniss.”

“Okay, we’re impressed.” That’s Natasha pretending to be annoyed.

“Okay,” he says to the apprehensive faces of his team. “Long story short, the guy who was behind the Battle of New York is coming back, with more resources… and an inside source.”

That stops Clint, his hand frozen holding a pretzel halfway to his mouth, but since he can’t seem to speak, Steve’s the one who asks: “Loki’s coming back?”

“What? No!” It’s been so long since Tony thought of Loki as being really responsible for it that he forgot this is the conclusion they’d leap to. No, these days when he thinks of Loki’s invasion it comes with flashes of memory, with images of silvered scars hinting at horrors nearly enough to destroy a god. The dreams of Loki’s torture may not have been his own, but they felt so real. Whatever fake S.H.I.E.L.D are doing to him right now pales in comparison to what’ll happen if Thanos gets his mitts on him. His stomach clenches, his breath is coming too fast, and how can he explain all this if he can’t even breathe?

Thor unknowingly comes to his rescue. “The Mad Titan,” he says grimly. Thor doesn’t do grim often, so that gets everyone’s attention.

It also gives Tony something else to focus on, releases the knot in his stomach. He snaps his fingers and points at Thor. “Ding ding ding, we have a winner! I think everyone knows a piece or two of this, but nobody’s put it all together until now.”

With a nervous energy that he tries to pass off as being purely about the upcoming fight, he gives them the bits they need to know: S.H.I.E.L.D. being compromised, Senator Boynton, Mistress Death, Thanos’ imminent arrival, the whole shebang—except for the parts directly involving Loki, of course. That’s on a need-to-know basis, and right now only Tony needs to know. He concludes by making a theatrical gesture to show off the objects on the bench, and telling them that it’s okay, because he has a Titan-busting kit right here.

“The Senator? Are you certain?” Of course that’s what Steve fixates on; he doesn’t want to believe that someone elected to uphold freedom, justice, and apple pie would get involved in something like this. Tony almost regrets being the one to disillusion him.

“Where are you getting your information?” Natasha asks.

“Let’s just say a very interesting little gadget fell into my hands.”

He picks up one of the devices on the workbench—the one that looks more technological than magical, the one with the alien symbols on it—and twiddles the volume dial. There’s only static right now, of course. It would’ve been too much to hope that they were transmitting right at this moment. Not to worry, though.

“It’s a communicator, set for one particular frequency. I’m guessing the Titan gave this to them so they can contact him. I’ve been monitoring it for a little while, but today something finally came through.”

He picks up a tablet and hits play on the recording. It’s crackly, but clear enough.

_“We have the package,”_ a human voice says in in clipped, military tones. _“Please specify time and place for delivery.”_

Then comes another voice, ominous and hollow, sounding like it’s been run through some kind of electronic filter (Tony thinks it’s a translation filter in the device). _“Excellent. We will collect it from your remote facility.”_

Tony bristles at hearing Loki referred to that way, like he’s not even a sentient being, but forces the feeling down.

They all listen as the date and time are agreed upon, as the hollow voice gives a not-so-subtle reminder of what will happen if promises are broken.

They share a collective shudder.

“Where the hell d’you get this?” Bruce picks up the communicator and turns it over in his hands.

“Oh, I ran across it in a house belonging to some guy named Clifford Boynton.” He catches Darcy’s eye while he says this, and damn, remind him never to play poker with that woman, because she gives absolutely no indication that she knows he’s leaving something out, that Loki’s the one who found it and handed it over to him.

“Senator Boynton?”

“The very same.”

"Wait,” says Jane. “Did they say February 6th? That’s less than two weeks away! How are we supposed to figure out how to deal with him in that time?”

“Glad you asked, Dr. Foster, because that’s where you come in.” He reaches out and picks up another object from the bench. It’s delicate, small enough to fit in the palm of one hand, and embossed with elaborate scrollwork in a metal that doesn’t quite look like gold and doesn’t quite look like silver. It would be sort of eggish in shape, if it weren’t currently in two halves, the faces that should be joined so smooth in appearance that it’s hard to believe they were ever connected.

“What is it?” she asks in awed tones as he places it into her hand.

“Not really my field, but I have it on good authority that it’s a portal generator. And I need you to make it work.”

“In two weeks?”

“What? You think you’re not up to the challenge?”

“I—well—I…”

“I, uh,” says Bruce, pushing his glasses up onto his nose. “I expect you’ll be wanting my help? Though I don’t know what I can do.”

“C’mon, have a little faith in yourselves! ‘Sides, not like I’m gonna leave myself out of the fun. Three of the world’s finest minds on the job? Titan dude doesn’t stand a chance.”

“But what are we doing with it?” asks Jane. “I mean, where are you planning on opening a portal to?”

Tony’s eyes glint with mischief as he says, “Oh, I think I know just the place…”

It’s not until much later, after the war conference is done and the plans are all made, that Darcy pulls him aside and asks, “Doesn’t it bother you at all that your entire Titan-busting kit came courtesy of Loki?”

It has occurred to him before, and hearing Darcy say it causes something like ice to settle in the pit of his stomach, but it’s too late to think about that stuff now. He waves her off. “Nah, not worried. Mutual interests and whatever.”

When she leaves the room, he pulls something out of his pocket: a long, thin bundle, which he partly unwraps, just enough to see the glint of the silver dagger inside. Another gift from Loki, his last resort. He only hopes it’s enough.

## Darcy

“Try it again,” she hears Bruce say as she steps out of the elevator on the workshop floor.

There’s a spark, and a briefly blinding glow that she’s only just in time to look away from.

“Two point four seconds,” says Jane as it dies down.

“That’s only point two more than last time. Looks like we’re approaching the limit.” Tony’s elbow-deep in wiring, and that might be an electrical burn on the inside of his upper arm.

Bruce taps a pencil on the table, thinking. Darcy’s not even sure why he has a pencil; she thought those things were banned from Tony’s workshop. “A bigger arc reactor, perhaps?”

Tony shakes his head. “The limitation isn’t in the arc reactor, it’s in the amount of power that can safely pass through the containment unit.” He brings up the schematic of the strange object in the center of the tangle of wires: a delicate web with a weird-looking stone in the middle of it. Zooming in, there are fine fault lines visible in the stone. “It’s broken, I knew that much going in. But it’s not just that it can’t store the energy, it’s that overloading it with power would fry it completely.”

Darcy has only the vaguest idea of the plan here: something about connecting one of Tony’s arc reactors to the containment doohickey, which will convert it to magic so that it can power something-or-other… yeah, technobabble was bad enough when it was just wormholes and space and dimensional travel. Now apparently magic and science are the same thing? It makes Darcy glad she’s just the coffee girl in this scenario.

“Well, if we can’t get it to last longer we’ll have to deal with, um, you know, the Titan, we’ll have to strike fast.”

“Two point four seconds isn’t very long,” says Jane, her brow creasing in a worried frown. “You’ll only get one shot at this.”

“Then we’ll make it count.” Tony straightens up, stretches, notices Darcy for the first time. “What’s up, Emma Peel?”

“Cap sent me down with this.” She gestures at the tray she’s set down on the workbench nearby. It’s laden with three sandwiches and three mugs of steaming coffee. “See, boss, just like old times,” she says, handing Jane a mug.

The three of them have been pushing themselves hard, and Jane looks as haggard and drawn as Darcy’s ever seen her. Two days left until Thanos arrives, and she has to wonder if any of the scientists have slept more than thirty hours, total, in the past ten days. It’s bad enough for Jane, whose job ends when the battle begins, but Tony and Bruce will have to throw down with a bunch of alien soldiers at the end of all this.

She eyes Tony as he turns back to swipe one-handed at the schematics while he chows down on the sandwich. She knows that for him this is as much about rescuing Loki as it is about fending off an alien attack on Earth. Not that he isn’t committed to that cause as well, but he’s giving off a nervous energy, like he’s channeling a days-long anxiety attack into this project. She wonders if the other two have noticed something’s up. Bruce, surely? He and Tony are pretty tight.

Not for the first time, she thinks about talking to someone about what she knows. It’s hard to imagine taking Cap aside and telling tales on Tony, though. Besides, as long as the interests of keeping Loki out of Thanos jail and keeping Thanos away from Earth are pretty well aligned, there’s no problem here.

There’s another side to this, too: she’s been keeping an eye on the reports, and an ear out in the mess, and it seems like Loki’s destruction factor has been decreasing since this thing with Tony, whatever it is, started up. Maybe it’s positive overall?

She does stop to wonder, though, what call Tony would make if Loki’s interests ever came into conflict with Earth’s.

## Tony

When it comes, they’re not ready, of course, but he does the only thing he can: he has Jarvis hit the most urgent alarm and gets suited up.

He’s not the only insomniac of the group, so when he gets to the Tower’s quinjet bay, Steve and Natasha are already there, radiating nervous energy, while the others run up.

“Is this a me thing or a Hulk thing?” says Bruce, sleepily tucking in his shirt.

“It’s three a.m., and I was actually getting some shut-eye,” grumbles Clint.

“Shield brothers! Shield sister! Is there adventure afoot?”

“Banner now, maybe Hulk later; trust me, Katniss, we’re all as sorry as you are that you’re missing your beauty sleep; and you are way too cheery for someone who just got woken up to punch aliens,” Tony says to them in turn. He waves everyone into the quinjet and gets in behind them to give a briefing.

“What’s the deal, Iron Man? I thought the Titan wouldn’t be here for hours.”

“You and me both, mon capitan. Jarvis just picked up six ships in high Earth orbit.”

“Mmm,” Natasha says thoughtfully. “They’re trying to get the drop on their ‘allies’.”

“No honor among thieves. But if we know they’re here, so will the people they’re supposed to meet.” And that’s the thing that has Tony the most worried. If fake-S.H.I.E.L.D. hand over Loki before the Avengers get there, no way he’s going to be able to persuade them to mount a rescue mission.

He has to hide the sigh of relief when Steve sets his jaw in that stubborn way of his and says, “Let’s see if we can’t get there first.”

“That’s the spirit, Cap!” And he knows that with Steve it’s nothing to do with rescuing Loki, just the principle of not letting fake-S.H.I.E.L.D. get away with suborning the already shady government agency to their even shadier goals, but he’ll take the support where he can.

Clint’s already finished prepping for takeoff, the bay doors opening, by the time they get the ramp closed up and ready to go.

Natasha’s on the comm, getting the super-phone tree started. “…Sorry, Ororo…. Yeah, we thought we had more time, too. Just send who you can.”

Good call, Tony thinks. “Patch me through to Darcy, Jarvis.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Yyyyyup?” she says when she picks up.

“It’s go time.”

“What? Now? I thought we had like twelve more hours. I haven’t even gone to bed yet!”

“Then don’t!”

“I just came in from an op and I have to put in an appearance at the debrief if you need me to keep this quiet.”

“After this, keeping quiet is not gonna matter.” At least, he sincerely hopes it won’t. “Just get there, okay? And bring who you can.”

“Sir, yes sir,” says Darcy with way more sass than he can deal with right now, and hangs up.

Steve plops down into the seat next to him. “Just six ships?”

“Yeah, not an invasion force. Jarvis says they’re staying put for now—probably think we haven’t spotted them.”

“We can expect he’ll have some powerful lieutenants, to take out the humans they’re supposed to meet.”

“Then ‘tis fortunate we are not all human,” says Thor, and he has that weird combination of grim determination and bubbling excitement that he gets before a fight.

“Okay,” says Steve. “This is how we’re going to play it…”


	21. Hell Ain't Half Full

## Darcy

Tony was right. Never tell him that, but he was right. This is their final play, this is what they’ve been building up to. Time to go all-out.

_Bring who you can_ , Tony said, and she’s having second thoughts about involving someone without special powers. But he has the S.H.I.E.L.D. training, and they need all the help they can get, so after making her call to Kate she stands outside Simon’s office door and knocks.

She tumbles through the door before he’s finished telling her to come in.

“Listen, something’s going on and, just, you have to trust me. I’ll explain on the way, okay, but I really need your hel—”

She breaks off when she realizes that Simon hasn’t turned from where he’s standing at the bookshelf, looking away from the door. And all he has on there is like training manuals and stuff, so it’s not like he’s actually fascinated or anything. He’s just standing there in the dark, his face in shadow. Her stomach lurches and a chill goes through her.

“Simon, what’s—”

“I’m sorry, Darcy.”

“Sorry? Sorry about wha—”

There’s a soft click as the door closes behind her. She whirls, as Agent Hand and one of her flunkies step out of the shadows. The flunky has a gun aimed at her head, and makes a point of pulling back the slide.

“Your weapon and phone, Lewis,” says Hand, and if it were possible to actually breathe ice, she would be doing so right now, her tone is so cold. “Slowly.”

Darcy’s heart is pounding and her mind is racing through all the self-defense techniques she’s been taught. Thing is, she knows she’s observant, and she’s good with a firearm, and she’s discovered she can keep her head way better in a life-or-death situation than she ever thought, but hand-to-hand has always been her weakness. She doesn’t stand a chance against two of them, not when they’re armed and she isn’t. And that’s assuming that Simon won’t back them up with violence.

She does the only thing she can: she unholsters her gun and places it on the floor, sliding it over to Hand with her foot. Her cellphone follows.

“Simon?” She risks a glance back over her shoulder at him, and he still can’t look her in the eye, but at Hand’s nod he steps forward. She blinks back tears of rage and betrayal as he puts the cuffs on her. This is humiliating enough already, being marched through the hallways by the flunky with an iron grip on her shoulder, passing co-workers and having to see the curiosity and judgment in their eyes.

Oh, god, there’s Chang. She jerks her chin up higher and sets her jaw, refusing to look away, but trying to reveal nothing in her expression.

This is no worse than that time she got busted, age fourteen, smoking pot in her older cousin’s van. Right? She swallows hard, counts the steps.

They shove her through the open door into the interrogation room, and oh shit she has never wanted to be in one of these, not on either side of the equation. It’s bright and impersonal and terrifying in all the ways she expected, and they open one side of the cuffs only to attach it to the sturdy metal bar that runs along the top of the table.

Simon lingers for a moment after Hand and flunky have exited, one hand on the door frame. He still can’t look her in the face.

“I just… I had too much to lose,” he says, and the door closes behind him, leaving her in the cold cell alone.

## Tony

It’s easy enough to get into the remote S.H.I.E.L.D. facility. Its security was based mostly on its location on a tiny uninhabited island off the Connecticut coast, completely unremarkable except for the secret bunker built under it. Natasha, Clint, and Steve take out a few guards with non-lethal force and stash them in a holding cell—of course it comes with a holding cell, it’s a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility, and that fact alone eases any lingering guilt Tony might have had about hitting a base that technically belongs to their allies. They obviously didn’t deem it secure enough for a high-risk prisoner like Loki, though, so there goes any hope of ‘accidentally’ freeing him before the battle starts.

Tony deposits Bruce and the MacGyvered gadgets in an out-of-the-way spot hidden by the bunker’s entrance, then gives Hawkeye a lift to the tallest tree on the island, and that’s about all the prep they have time for before—

“Registering a massive surge at your location, sir.”

“No shit, J. Thanks for the heads-up!”

Tony manages to swerve so his path doesn’t take him right through the portal that’s just opening up, jerks upward to avoid colliding with a tree, and barely gets his flight path under control before the first aliens step through.

Well, _step_ maybe isn’t quite the right word. More like scuttle out of Ellen Ripley’s nightmares. Four arms and two legs, all ending in razor-sharp claws, which they use to scramble up trees like it’s nothing, and Hawkeye’s having a hard time shooting them down fast enough so Tony takes the opportunity to blast a few that get a little too close. And they’re tough little fuckers, too, because even when he knocks them out of the trees, they manage to twist in the air and land almost unscathed.

He’s weaving in and out, and Widow’s backflipping and sliding under aliens and running up tree trunks faster than you can blink, and Cap’s shield is flying, and maybe Thor has a point about this being exhilarating. When you’ve got your super-competent team at your back, and you’ve spent nearly four years learning to actually work like one, yeah, maybe a good fight is just what you need to clear the cobwebs out.

Just when he thinks that, naturally, is when it all goes to shit.

There’s an unholy screech out of the portal and he doesn’t have the chance to look round right away because he’s taking care of one of the scuttling things.

“Is that—” comes Clint’s voice on the comm, uncharacteristically hesitant. “Is that a fucking dragon?”

Tony never actually gets to see what hits him. He just knows that something scaly and purple barrels into him, the armor crumples in on the left side, and suddenly it’s unbearably hot, like _get me out of here I don’t want to die roasting inside this tin can_ hot.

“Coming, Iron Man, I’ve got you!”

Before Cap can get to him, though, there’s a _ROOOOOOOAAAAAAAR!_ and a huge green beast crashes through the trees, backhanding the lizard thing off him and chasing off in the direction of where it bounced along the ground, churning up dirt and leaves and undergrowth as it went.

“Uh, not that I’m ungrateful for the save, Hulk,” he wheezes, “but we kinda needed your other self on gadget duty.”

“’Fraid that’s you now, Iron Man,” says Cap, kneeling beside him and running his hands over the dents in the armor. “Can you breathe? Need me to get this off you?”

“You’re not benching me, Cap, I’m one of your heavy hitters!”

“No offense, but you’re not looking much like any kind of hitter right now. Besides, we’ve got Hulk on that, and we need that portal fired up ASAP!”

“But—”

“No arguments.” Cap’s obviously decided if he’s healthy enough to argue, he’s not in serious trouble, so he gives him a hand up and takes off after one of the… yep, Clint was right. Those are definitely dragons. No other word for a huge flying lizard that breathes fire.

Thor’s cackling as he swings his hammer, and of course he’s fought dragons before, why wouldn’t he have fought dragons before? Except for how they _don’t exist_. Or that’s what Tony would’ve said before he nearly got baked alive by one.

There are nearly a dozen of them, now; it’s hard to count because they keep flying around goddamn it, and weaving in and out of the trees. But some of them have passengers, and if the scuttling aliens were creepy, these guys are terrifying. Thanos is obviously sending the big guns now. Tony sees one leap from the back of its dragon and tackle Thor in mid-air, which Tony’s seen villains try before, and it never ends well for them. Only, this time the villain is huge, horned, yellow-skinned, and way heavier than Thor was expecting, because it sends them both into a tailspin. When they crash, so destructively it brings down a couple hefty trees, Tony jerks as if to run toward them, but Thor’s getting up and slugging it out with old yellow-horns, and obviously not hurt too bad, so he decides not to wade in. Besides, he has a job to do.

With a sigh that sets him off wheezing again, he makes for the device and continues setting it up, keeping an eye on the fight and an ear on the comms, just in case.

He sees a gangly, blue-skinned alien behind Natasha, but before he can fire off a warning, it knocks Natasha down, which, okay, just serves to make her mad… or, it would, except that the alien has one hand holding Natasha down by the throat and the other aiming purple beams at her eyes. Some kind of mind-control, because she’s gone limp and stopped fighting, and he’s about to jump back into the battle when an arrow hits the distracted alien in the side, and Clint’s already got another in the air and a third nocked. As soon as the mind-control breaks, Natasha’s back up and in the fight, and it’s okay, they’ve got this, and Thanos hasn’t come through the portal yet but Tony needs to get the device up and running before he does.

He’s the first to hear the incoming jet. His head snaps up, scanning the sky. Could be allies—which they could really use right about now—or fake-S.H.I.E.L.D. come to do the prisoner hand-off.

“Jarvis, identify!”

Before he gets a reply, there’s a familiar voice on the shared comm channel.

“Avengers, this is the Blackbird. Where do you need us?”

“Great to hear a friendly voice, Storm,” says Steve, and starts giving orders.

Tony’s aware of the battle stepping up around him, of voices on the comm calling warnings and commands.

The newcomers are mostly X-Men, but others too. He hears Rogue’s distinctive twang over the comm, sees a barrage of explosions from Gambit’s cards, gets buzzed by a tiny person shooting yellow energy bolts and yelling, “Hey, Tony!”

“Good to see ya, Wasp! Little busy here for a social visit.”

He wants to join them, dammit, if only to prove that Johnny Storm still can’t out-fly him. But the device is tricky, and they’ll only have one shot at this.

He’s so focused that he doesn’t notice the scuttling alien approaching him until it’s whisked up into a tree by a net—no, wait, a web.

“Thanks, Spider-man. I owe you one.”

“Sleeping on the job, grandpa? You owe me two!” says the spider, slinging himself off back into the fight.

“Don’t push it.”

They’re turning the tide. They’ll be winning this by the time—

Oh, shit.

An enormous orange dragon, three times bigger than the others, flies through the portal in a way that can only be described as majestic. And on its back, a purple giant with glowing eyes and a vicious grin that has haunted Tony’s nightmares.

“Thanos!” he yells over the comm, because it’s a bit late for being coy about the guy’s name. “Thanos is here!”

And from the direction of the mainland, another jet swoops in. This time it’s a S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue quinjet, but Tony has a feeling that it isn’t here as backup.

Sure enough, it hovers in low over the fight, and broadcasts from the loudspeaker:

“Avengers, X-Men, this is a S.H.I.E.L.D. operation, and you are ordered to stand down.”

“No, guys, it’s not—” Tony’s saying, but the alien dragons pull up and circle in the air, and the X-Men drop down, confused, and the quinjet lowers itself to the ground in the clearing out front of the bunker.

Even the other Avengers pause, waiting to see what will happen, and Tony could have told them what will happen, because what happens is this:

The ramp at the back of the quinjet lowers, and a woman in a dark business suit, with red streaks in her brown hair, steps out. She keeps her ramrod-straight bearing as she walks down the ramp, followed by a couple of less confident agents. These two are obviously torn between fear of their boss, fear of the purple, dragon-riding giant in front of them, and fear of the chained figure they’re dragging behind them.

The figure’s long dark hair is lank and matted, his clothing torn, and a metal mask covers the lower half of his face. When he looks up, even though he knows Loki can’t see his face through the helmet, Tony feels like the bruise-eyed gaze pins him where he stands.

Loki can barely stand under his own power, so when the guards shove him toward Thanos, he staggers forward a few steps and stumbles to his knees.

A knot of fear and rage is forming in Tony's stomach. He's never seen Loki so defeated, even when he was practically flayed alive, even when he was catatonic and refusing to heal his own near-fatal injuries.

_Come on, Loki,_ he thinks. _Have a plan. You always have a plan!_

He feels his mouth form the silent word, “No!” and his foot takes an involuntary half-step forward. And Loki looks at him, catches his eye, and… gives an almost imperceptible shake of his head. _Don’t try and save me._

Tony can’t tell whether it’s pragmatism, because really how much of a chance does he stand against the alien troops and fake-S.H.I.E.L.D. without backup, or whether Loki’s given up.

No. This isn’t right. Loki would rather die than go back to that torment. And if Tony can’t free him, the very least he can do is save him.


	22. An Army Couldn't Hold Me Back

## Darcy

Okay, this looks bad.

This looks really bad.

She’s gone through her pockets and found nothing that could help pick the lock of the handcuffs—not that she’s even confident that she could manage that one-handed—so she’s using a penknife to work at the bolts that fasten one end of the metal bar to the table. The knife is going to be for shit after this, but she thinks the cousin who gave it to her (same one who got her busted for smoking pot) would probably appreciate the blaze of glory it went out in.

But even if she gets free of the table, she hasn’t got a plan for the three-inch steel door, which is designed to withstand super-strength.

_One thing at a time, Lewis._

The final bolt comes free, and she holds her breath as she pries the flat plate far enough away from the tabletop to slip the handcuff out.

Up in the corner of the room a red light shines underneath the camera. Well, if she tampers with it they’re going to know something’s wrong in the cell, but on the off-chance that she gets away before they see it’s her, she might be able to just… walk out of the base like nothing is wrong. Like she belongs here.

Which she does, dammit, she belongs here more than those shitty, traitorous…

Deep breaths. No time to think about that now. She’ll consider exactly how pissed off she is at Simon—later. For now, she stands up on her chair and tilts the camera away so it’s looking at a blank wall, not the door that she’s going to try and exit through.

Speaking of which, how the hell is she going to do that? Even at a distance she can see it’s a security lock made to withstand exactly this scenario. She gets up close, not touching, just moving side to side so she can examine the keypad in the light. Looks like the 4 key has some residue on it from being pushed repeatedly, and maybe… the 9? This is hopeless. Even if she identifies all the keys in the code, she’ll be locked out after a couple of false combinations, and probably set off an alarm, too.

She’s squinting at the pad, trying to make out any other suspect keys, when suddenly the light on the security lock turns green.

That sends her scrambling backward, ducking behind the door, waiting for the guard to enter. Poor shmuck, probably just sitting there doing their job, wondering why the camera went wonky, and now she’s going to choke them into unconsciousness with the chain of a pair of handcuffs.

At least, that’s what she’s going to do if all goes according to plan.

When nobody comes through the door, she makes herself wait another ten seconds before creeping up and pressing her ear against it.

Silence. Well, maybe some distant sounds from elsewhere in the base, but it sure doesn’t sound as if there’s someone standing outside the door ready to pistol-whip her and chain her back to that table.

Never one to worry overmuch about the state of a gift-horse’s teeth, she opens the door on an empty hallway and walks out, stuffing her right hand into her jacket pocket with the handcuffs still attached. Brisk, she’ll allow herself brisk. Like _important business to be getting on with_ brisk, not _running for my life_ brisk. But it’s several harrowing minutes of controlled breathing and nodding to people she passes like everything’s normal, before she finds herself on the outside of the nearest door.

Of course, that’s when someone comes out of the shadows and tries to grapple her.

She has the assailant on the floor before she even knows who she’s pinning, but eases off the pressure with her arm across the neck when she recognizes the unimpressed scowl.

“…Kate?”

“Yes, Kate. Who do you think?”

“I just broke out of a secure facility owned by a spy agency, I don’t know who I thought!” She gives her friend a hand up and pulls her into a hug.

“Oh, sure, _now_ you want a hug,” Kate gripes through a smile.

"Was that you? With the security door?”

“Yeah. Cool, right? But listen, you can thank me later. Now, if we wanna catch the fight, first we have to catch the flight.” She gestures over her shoulder at where a quinjet is prepping for takeoff, agents swarming up the ramp.

“Don’t know if you noticed, but my cover’s kinda blown.”

“It’s not Hand’s lot. See?”

Darcy follows where she’s pointing, then takes off running as soon as she recognizes the figure, skidding to a halt in front of him.

“Agent Phi—Coulson!”

He looks her over, lingers for a moment on the hand she has stuffed in her pocket, and throws her something which she catches automatically.

“Well? Get in if you’re getting in.”

“Oh, crap, I forgot. Kate, I need to get the—”

“It’s at your place, right?” Kate starts pulling on her scooter helmet. “Don’t worry, I’ll get it. And backup.”

Darcy barely has time to nod before Kate’s out of there. She climbs the ramp, sits down on an uncomfortable bench next to a blank-faced agent she doesn’t recognize, takes the helmet, comm, and vest that get handed to her, and tries not to think about how she’s already exhausted before the fight even begins.

It’s only then that she remembers the thing in her left hand, and uncurls her fingers to reveal a set of handcuff keys. When she glances up at Agent Phil, he pretends not to notice, but she can see his eyes twinkling.

## Tony

With all eyes on the prisoner hand-off playing out in front of them, Tony fastens the last wire in place, sets the portal destination, and double-checks the connections. He can’t test the set-up without drawing attention to what he’s doing, so it has to be right.

Yep, everything looks good. A miniature arc reactor connects to the burned-out cosmic containment glove thingy, which converts the reactor’s power to something the portal controller can use. Genius, really—with one notable limitation. They can generate enough power to hold the portal open for 2.4 seconds, but Thanos has to be vulnerable or there’s no way they’ll get him through it.

That’s only going to happen if his allies actually pick up the fight again.

“Good,” Thanos growls out, his voice an earthquake. “Keep your pets under control and give me what I came for. Then perhaps we shall seal our agreement.”

“I need your assurances first,” says the Head Agent Woman with the red-streaked hair. Christ, she’s got guts, looking up at Thanos like she deals with giants on dragons every day of the week.

Thanos rumbles, and it sounds like ancient boulders scraping across the mountainside at the beginning of a landslide. It takes Tony a couple of seconds to realize that he’s actually laughing.

Tony’s looking around the battlefield for his team, and one by one they catch his eye. Steve’s gritting his teeth so hard that Tony doesn’t envy the guy’s dentist. Natasha’s blank-faced as always, but he sees the glint of her knives as she slides them from their hiding places. Hulk’s got confusion in his eyes, poor guy, and if there’s one thing that makes him angry—well, extra angry—it’s confusion.

“Very well, little worm,” Thanos is saying. His dragon snorts and tosses its head, and he reins it in like a horse. “I give you my… assurances.”

If Head Agent Woman is taken in by that, she’s a bigger idiot than Tony gave her credit for, but she just nods sharply.

“Jarvis, private channel to Wolverine.” That’s the advantage of being inside a metal helmet: your voice only broadcasts if you use the external mic. He’s going to use this advantage to have a nice private chat.

“Yes, sir.”

“Wolverine, don’t respond, just glance my way if you can hear me.”

Sure enough, Logan’s eyes flick toward him.

“You’re not buying this any more than I am, right?”

From the scowl already on his face, that’d be a no.

“Right. Plus, these guys are not real S.H.I.E.L.D.—they’ve been undermining S.H.I.E.L.D. on the orders of Senator Clifford Boynton.”

The scowl deepens, if that were possible.

“Yeah, that Clifford Boynton. Mutant-hating, anti-alien bigot Boynton. They’re deluded if they think Thanos is going to leave us alone after this, and they’ve done nothing to warrant our trust. Pretty sure your X-buddies would see it the same way if you put it to them like that?”

The scowl lightens to a sneer, but it’s the reckless sneer that Logan gets before he does something stupid, so Tony knows he’s got him.

He opens a channel to the Avengers. “Okay, Cap, on your mark.”

Cap just waits a breath, then nods, and suddenly the air is full of vibranium shields and thrown daggers and explosive arrows, all aimed at Thanos’ army. The X-Men and the rest are a little slower off the mark, but sure enough Logan leads the charge, and the battle is joined again.

Tony takes advantage of the chaos to make a beeline through the trees toward the bound figure on the ground. Sure enough, the magic-dampening shackles are brittle when it comes to a close-range repulsor blast.

Loki looks up at him, blinking, as if seeing properly for the first time. He’s filthy, and bloody, and his wrists are rubbed raw, but Tony wants to scoop him up and hug him. Not in the middle of the superheroes, though, and not in the middle of a battle.

“Can you get this off,” he says, fumbling with the metal mask.

The trickster squeezes his fingers into a fist, and then uncurls them again, looking down at his hand like it doesn’t belong to him, but a flicker of green fire crackles across his fingertips, and he nods. It’s the work of a moment to put his hands to the back of his head and release the metal. When it drops to the ground, Tony blasts it a couple of times for good measure.

Loki accepts his hand up and scans the battle. Agents are flooding out of the quinjet and taking up strategic positions behind cover, but for the most part they’re ignored by the superheroes. They seem reluctant to get involved for now, biding their time until one side starts coming out on top.

“The prisoner! He’s aiding the pr—”

Tony cuts off the fake-S.H.I.E.L.D. flunky with a blast to his torso, calculated to hit the Kevlar vest and fall short of fatal.

He and Loki look at each other, and every moment Loki’s looking more and more like his troublemaking self.

“Okay,” says Tony, “I’ve had just about enough of these spies spying on my… other spies. You with me?”

Loki grins viciously.

They wade into combat, circling back to back, surrounding themselves with blasts of magic and repulsor energy. Loki flickers in and out, leaving doubles behind him, and Tony blasts his distracted opponent in the head. Tony divebombs an alien soldier and rolls with it across the churned-up ground. It ends on top, thinking it’s got the upper hand, but Tony just grins inside his helmet as Loki slips a blade between its ribs (assuming it has ribs).

The aliens are limited in number by how many ships Thanos brought, but they are tough. Between the Avengers and the X-Men, they’ve taken out a few, but all the heroes are getting worn down—a problem the alien critters don’t seem to have.

Fake-S.H.I.E.L.D. obviously think they see the tide turning, because they’ve started taking pot shots. One blast narrowly misses Wasp, and while she buzzes away, confused about why they’re firing at her, it just pisses Tony off. Right now, he’s the only one firing back at fake-S.H.I.E.L.D. Okay, he’s definitely not shooting to kill, but they could make the difference between winning and losing against Thanos, and he can’t afford to let them mess this up.

The battle’s so loud, the second quinjet is right overhead before he hears it.

“What now?” he snaps into the comm.

There’s no answer right away from the jet, just a bunch more people in S.H.I.E.L.D. uniforms rappelling down into the clearing, and fuck if he’s going to have to fight more humans wearing allies’ clothing today. He hates S.H.I.E.L.D. as much as the next secret-government-agency-fearing American, but this is not what he signed up for.

Then, he recognizes one of the people on the way down, a slim unassuming figure in a suit, and relief washes over him.

“Agent! You are back on my Christmas card list!”

“Iron Man has a Christmas card list?” says a familiar deadpan female voice.

“Guys,” he says on the all-hero comm channel, “the cavalry’s here!”

And he has no idea when a guy who looks like an accountant and a grad school dropout/intern became ‘the cavalry’ in his mind, but he’ll take what he can get.

## Darcy

It’s already chaos when she gets there: there are like twelve factions, each fighting only some of the others (it doesn’t escape her notice that Tony and Loki constitute their own faction at this point); the ground is churned up and mixed with alien blood to form an ugly sludge; and some people in S.H.I.E.L.D. uniforms are allies, and some are enemies.

For some reason, that last part is what really steams her broccoli. The extra betrayal, she guesses? Anyway, leave the aliens to the supers. She’s not equipped to fight them anyway. What she is equipped to do, on the other hand, is to shadow Agent Phil and provide a nice distraction for him as he makes his way around fake-S.H.I.E.L.D., taking them out one by one with choke-holds and securing their hands with zip ties. He has an unerring instinct for which are friendlies and which are hostiles, too.

She only falters when he starts making for one particular agent. He’s wearing a helmet, and she can’t see his face, but something about his posture tips her off.

“…Simon?”

Shit, she didn’t mean to say it aloud. He turns, and the agent with him turns faster, firing off a shot at her before she can blink.

She’s lucky that he goes for center of mass like he’s trained to do, which hits her square in the Kevlar and knocks her off her feet into a pile of moldering leaves, some crunchy with frost and some slick with alien blood.

Ah, shit, that’s gotta be bruised ribs at least. She feels like she’s breathing fire as she pushes herself up onto her elbows.

Simon’s stumbling her way, saying her name, and he looks like he’s going to throw up.

Then, just because there’s not enough crazy crap going on, there’s a sound that’s becoming all too familiar, with its accompanying smell of ozone, and the air in front of her tears open.

“Not you again,” she sighs as Asgardian Barbie steps through.

This time, the guy who follows is not that huge slab of axe-wielding muscle, but someone who looks like a cartoon version of the devil. Seriously, Darcy wonders, what is her life?

“Simon!” she barely manages to wheeze out.

She tries to lurch forward and—what? She has no idea, but Simon’s between the cartoon duo and the battlefield, and they’re stalking toward him, and she can’t just do nothing. But there’s a firm grip around her, and Agent Phil is there half-supporting her weight and half holding her back with a hand clasped over her mouth.

“Don’t,” he says quietly into her ear, and it just makes her writhe against him, but she’s hurting and he’s got a steel grip for a guy who must be pushing fifty. “You’ll get yourself killed.”

Asgard-Barbie and Devil-Ken casually stroll toward the battle like they’re arriving fashionably late to a party, and barely even seem to notice when Simon and the other agent empty the rest of their clips at them. Darcy’s thrashing and she wants to run in even if she knows it’s hopeless, and okay so maybe he betrayed her and had her locked up, but he’s still her friend, and she can’t just sit here goddammit while—

Devil-guy curls his hand in a beckoning gesture, and Simon’s dragged toward him as if an invisible force has him by the neck, his feet trailing on the ground and his fingers scrabbling at his throat. Devil-guy cocks his head, contemplating Simon, and just when Darcy thinks he might deem him beneath his notice or something, he twists his wrist sharply, and there’s a sickening crunch. Simon sags to the ground with his head twisted at an angle that looks so wrong she has to swallow her bile before it spills out over Agent Phil’s hand.

She’s vaguely aware of Barbie taking out the other agent in a similar manner, but as soon as Agent Phil releases his grip, she scrambles through the freezing mud to Simon’s body. She’s seen enough dead people that she doesn’t need to check his pulse, but she does it anyway.

She clutches him to her chest. “Don’t be dead,” she chokes out, her words broken. “Please don’t be dead.” He’s all twisted up awkwardly and every sob feels like it’s going to break her ribs.

A soft click beside her brings her back to the world. When she looks up, Agent Phil is crouching low next to her with one knee on the ground. He’s just slotted a new magazine into his pistol, and is drawing back the slide. His expression is sympathetic, but he jerks his head toward the battle.

“Let’s move.”

She nods, drags a sleeve across her face. Before she gets up, though, she straightens out Simon’s limbs a bit, and closes his eyes. That’s what you do for dead people, right? Seems kind of empty, but that’s what you do.

Her whole body feels hollow as she follows Agent Phil, ducking and crouching and running from cover to cover. She just lets the training take over, lets the buzzing in her ears distance her from the shouting and the smells and the pain.


	23. Never Say Goodbye

## Tony

The first he knows of Mephisto and Amora’s arrival at the scene is a red smoke that pours into the gap he and Loki have just made around them. It takes him a second to remember Mephisto’s dramatic exit last time they met, before he realizes what’s going on. Instead of taking a solid form, Mephisto swirls around the trickster, pouring himself into Loki’s mouth, ears, nose…. Loki gasps and chokes for a few seconds, before flickering and teleporting a few feet away, where he staggers down onto one knee. The red smoke stretches out, before snapping back elastically and swirling into the familiar devilish figure.

“Clever. But of course you’ve always been clever.”

Loki’s still choking too much to reply, so he spits at Mephisto’s feet instead.

Tony circles. He knows from experience that he’s no match for this guy, that his biggest blasts are like firing at him with a pea-shooter. Loki’s injured and worn out from two weeks’ captivity with no access to his magic. And Mephisto knows it, too, judging by how he doesn’t even go for the magic, choosing just to stroll over to his prey—and make no mistake, at this point Loki is definitely prey—and backhand him to the ground.

“More than you may ever know,” says Loki, and even to Tony that just sounds like fronting.

Pure hate seethes from the look that Loki gives as he slowly wipes the blood from his lip, but Tony has been watching him fight, seeing the way his clones are getting fewer and his illusions shakier. There’s not much left in him at this point.

There’s still one ace up Tony’s sleeve, though. Not that he has sleeves in the armor. An ace in a small magnetically sealed compartment, but that’s less catchy. The two immortals menacing Loki are totally ignoring him as he slips it into his hand, Amora standing with her arms folded and an amused smirk on her face.

This has to be a swift strike. If Mephisto thinks he’s got anything to fear from him, he’ll swat Tony down without breaking a sweat. He takes a deep breath and counts down from three.

The boot repulsors engage, sending him flying at Mephisto _(oh god, oh god, you’re attacking the Lord of Hell, you’re going to die so painfully)_ , he brings up his arm and aims carefully _(better hope that when Loki explained what this does, for once he wasn’t full of shit)_ , and the silver connects with Mephisto’s chest _(bare chest? Really? And people say_ I’m _a d-bag)_.

There’s a huge crack—or, at least, it sounds huge close up, but with all the stuff going on it probably just gets lots in the cacophony—and Tony just about has time to see the horror on Mephisto’s face as he gets _sucked into_ the goddamn enchanted dagger. He reflexively lets go when it superheats to the point where he can feel it through the armor, and tumbles ass over tit into a tree trunk. Which of course he hits upside down, and then slides down onto his head like a Looney Tunes character.

Dignity? What’s that?

By the time he regains his feet, Amora’s backing up into a portal. Seems like she’s not up for a fight now that her backup got taken out. He lets her go. Too tired, too injured, too many other things to think about.

 

For instance Loki, who right now is on his knees, cradling the dagger and laughing with manic glee.

“Uh, not to interrupt your Lady Macbeth moment, but what the hell just happened?”

“Oh, Stark, you have just proven your worth a thousandfold.”

“I _thought_ I was killing the Lord of Hell for you. But apparently not?”

“All will become clear soon enough.”

“Yeah, excuse me if that doesn’t quite cut it right now.”

Even covered in gore and grime, even in the middle of what looks like a mental break of some kind, Loki gets to his feet with regal poise.

“Soon. But for now, there are other matters to attend to, I think?” He inclines his head toward the battle that still rages behind Tony.

“Oh, and I guess you’re gonna cut out now and leave us to our doom, or whatever?”

Loki stashes the dagger, gives a predatory grin, and licks his lips in a way that really should not be a turn-on. “I find that you have quite whetted my appetite.” And with that, he leaps at the nearest alien lieutenant with renewed energy, and leads her in a whirling dance of glittering blades.

## Darcy

One after the next, she takes out fake-S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. At some point she picks up some kind of experimental weapon that one of them has dropped and decides to find out what it does by pointing it at an alien soldier.

Well, it’s a big boom, even if it takes two or three of them to finish off the alien.

_Cool_ , some part of her thinks. If she could feel anything right now, that would be quite satisfyingly destructive.

Dragon-thing. Gonna need more than three blasts. She finds that if she holds down the trigger it powers up before firing. That, plus five more, takes it down. It’s not dead but it’s out of the fight.

The soldier she knocked off its back. She fires twice more, and the weapon chokes and dies.

Huh. That’s experimental weaponry for ya. She throws it aside, empties a magazine from her handgun into the alien.

It keeps coming.

Her last magazine slides into place and she raises the gun again. These shots won’t be enough. Maybe she can weaken it for someone else to take out after she’s—after she’s out of the fight.

If she can fire them before it’s on her.

“Darcy! Heads up!”

She pauses for an instant, just long enough for the green flying thing to swoop in and grab her under the arms, which sets off a round of struggling until she realizes that it’s holding her gently. No, wait, not _it_ ; _him._ He’s alien, or possibly a mutant, but his face looks pretty much like a human teenager. He called her by name, and he’s smiling at her.

Then he’s setting her down on her feet outside the ring of battle, where two others are waiting.

“Ohmygod Kate!” She runs at her friend for the tightest hug she’s ever given, and she’s not even slightly ashamed.

“I brought backup,” comes Kate’s muffled voice from somewhere inside the hug. “And… this.”

Darcy lets go, and allows Kate to place into her hands a long, black, rectangular case.

“Where do you need us?” says the other person, another teenage boy, fully human-looking except for the fact that he’s floating six feet in the air, his tattered red cape swirling around him in those magic winds or whatever that always seem to surround superheroes for the extra drama.

“Yeah...” She looks around the battlefield, blinking. Two minutes ago, she was doing a full on charge of the light brigade, and now she’s having to contemplate the possibility of actual victory. “What are your powers, uh…?”

“Billy,” Billy fills in. “Um, magic mostly, when it works.”

“Okay, Billy, you and Kate go help the Avengers. Focus on the footsoldier aliens, but if it looks like any hostiles notice where we’re going, you distract them from us, okay?”

Kate nods, pulling her bow off her back and the first arrow from her quiver.

“Where are you and Teddy gonna be?” Billy asks.

Darcy kneels on the ground and flicks open the latches on the case.

“We,” she says, hefting the Chitauri mind-control scepter, “are going to be winning this fight.”

## Tony

Real-S.H.I.E.L.D. helped to even things out a bit, taking fake-S.H.I.E.L.D. out of the equation, but even now that the superheroes (plus Loki) only have to deal with Thanos and his minions, Tony’s not feeling optimistic. Everyone who tries to touch Thanos just gets knocked down (or knocked out—good one, Clint).

Tony teams up with Thor to take down a dragon, dodges the gore splatter that follows Mjolnir out of the back of the giant lizard’s head, and swoops in to give Gambit a ride out of the path of a riderless dragon’s flame breath, depositing him neatly on the creature’s back.

“Many thanks, mon ami!” whoops the Cajun as he wrestles to get the dragon under control. It just serves to piss the creature off, but Gambit seems okay with that, prodding and goading it to swerve into a tree.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Tony’s aware of his injuries. Cap was ready to take him out of the fight after he got crushed by that first dragon, but since then he’s had a blow to the head (not a concussion, thank you, he should know by now what a concussion feels like), wrenched a leg nearly out of joint when an alien grabbed it on a fly-by, and he thinks most of his right arm is singed somewhere under the armor. He’ll have to keep running on adrenaline for now, because Loki, that crazy little fucker, is taking on Thanos, and hell if he’s just going to stand by.

The Titan is laughing at Loki, a condescending chuckle of impending doom, when Tony buzzes in and starts firing. Oh, he knows it’s just about as useless as when he was taking pot shots at Mephisto, but if the only thing he can do is be Loki’s distraction, then that’s what he’s going to do. He gets the feeling that this is what it’s like for Jan when she shoots her little wasp-stingers at full-size foes, but it works for her, being constantly underestimated. Tony thinks Thanos isn’t underestimating him at all, that he’s exactly as inconsequential as the Titan thinks he is.

“Jarvis, all power to the chest RT.”

“Sir, I must caution you that power is below 20%.”

“I know!”

“If levels drop much further—”

“I know, Jarvis, just fire the damn thing up!”

“Very well, sir.”

Jarvis is pouring power into the large repulsor in his chest plate, his biggest weapon and his last resort, when yet another flying green thing swoops by him. Between the time when his instinct to fire kicks in, and when he actually gets off a shot from his gauntlet repuslor, he takes in what exactly it is that just buzzed him and manages to send the shot wide.

“What the hell, Darcy?” he asks over the general comm channel.

Because, yeah, that’s who it is, and boy does she have Thanos’ attention all of a sudden, because that glowstick she’s clutching is looking awful familiar. The Titan roars, incensed, and makes a lunge for her.

“Are you out of your mind? Get the scepter away from him!”

“Tony, the portal!” is all she says in response.

“Stand down, Agent Lewis,” says Cap.

“Darcy? Why are you here on the field of battle?” Thor puts in.

“Guys, do you trust me?” she asks, as the green creature carrying her weaves skillfully around Thanos’ attempts to blast them out of the air.

“Trust you to put yourself in danger,” says Cap, as Tony says over him:

“…Okay, yeah.”

“Then get the portal open! I can’t play keep-away forever!”

She sounds confident of her plan, so he doesn’t stop to wonder why he’s following the orders of a rookie S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and takes off for the portal device. He hears her giving more orders over the comm.

“Cap, on my mark, I’m gonna need you to throw your shield.”

“Agent Lew—”

“Just go with it for now, Cap,” says Tony. “If it doesn’t work, we can go back to getting our asses handed to us.”

“Okay everyone! Three—two—one—MARK!”

It all comes together in a beautiful, blinding moment. Darcy is only a few feet above Thanos’ head, holding out the scepter. Cap’s shield comes spinning in, shattering the crystal and sending out a blast of psychic energy that flattens most of the people still standing and sends Darcy and her ride flying.

Thanos staggers, clutches his head, lets out a roar of agony that would shake everyone to the ground if they weren’t already there.

Tony’s more sheltered behind the mound that houses the bunker entrance, and he rallies quick enough to flip the switch on the portal engine.

Behind Thanos, the portal shimmers open onto a desolate red plain, and Loki pushes up onto his elbows, raises one hand, and musters enough power for one last magic blast that sends Thanos stumbling backward through it half a second before it flickers shut again.

For several seconds, there’s utter quiet across the battlefield, until a gray-skinned alien lieutenant with a vicious mouth full of terrifying fangs sounds the order for retreat.

Nobody makes a move to stop them as they activate some kind of teleporter that takes them back to Thanos’ fleet. Nobody wants to have to deal with any more pissed-off alien hostages.

"Where did you send him?” Agent wants to know.

“Oh, a little place called the Cancerverse, where his girlfriend is dead and he has no army.” Tony allows himself a second to feel smug about that. “He won’t be back for a while.”

As everyone picks themselves up, Tony makes his way over to where Loki is lying on his back, and the hairs on his neck stand up at how still Loki looks. He will deny to the end of his days the power of the wave of relief that washes over him when he sees that thin chest rising and falling.

He kneels next to the prone form. “Wake up, princess. We won.”

“I am not sleeping, just preserving my remaining energy for what comes next.”

“What comes—?”

“Is the prisoner alive, Iron Man?” Tony hadn’t even noticed Cap walking up behind him.

“Oh, give me a break. He fought Thanos with us. Doesn’t that earn him a head start at least?”

“Not your call to make,” says Agent.

Ugh, he may have just fought an army of aliens on dragons, but he is not up to the combined forces of Agent “Secret Ninja” Coulson and Captain Fucking America.

Loki, for his part, pushes himself up into a sitting position with a faintly amused expression that makes Tony think maybe the other shoe has yet to drop.

Suddenly, there’s a crash of thunder overhead, and no rain in sight. Tony looks around wildly for the one person he knows who can create thunder on demand, but Thor is just standing there, hammer held loosely at his side, his face set in a grim expression.

“You should have fled while you could, brother,” he says. “For once you are caught out by your own scheming.”

Loki schools his expression into something unreadable. Just lifts his face to the sky and waits.

Another thunderclap, louder than any Tony’s heard—and he fights alongside the god of thunder, which can get pretty loud—and a whooshing roar as if something’s approaching. When it drops, it’s not a shoe, but a huge man on a horse that rears up and shows off its _way too many_ legs. The blank-faced guards with him ride much less impressive horses, but still cut an imposing figure.

“The prisoner’s fate is mine to decide,” says the head guy in charge. Bushy white beard, eye patch, golden spear… oh shit, Tony know who this is.

“Father,” says Thor, dropping to one knee and bowing his head.

Odin’s attention, though, is on the trickster, who is still sitting on the ground, leaning back on his hands, making no move to pay his respects or even to spit out defiance and bile, just sitting, like he’s at a picnic, with a carefully governed smirk on his lips. All the Earth heroes are standing perfectly still in positions of non-threatening respect, or they are backing gradually away. This suddenly got way bigger than they want to deal with.

“Get on your feet, Loki Laufeyson.”

Tony doesn’t miss the slight flinch that the name provokes. It must amount to being disowned in public.

“In good time,” is all he says.

Odin breathes deep, his anger barely restrained, and nods for the guards to dismount.

“Ah,” says Loki, flowing smoothly to his feet, but he doesn’t even look at the beefy warriors who are coming for him, just turns to where another person is appearing in a glittering black curl of magic. “Impeccable timing.”

“What is this, the Times Square of the Nine Realms?” gripes Tony to himself, but Natasha’s warning glare is enough to shut him up. Besides, he’s starting to remember where he’s seen the newcomer before.

Pale skin, black hair, her green robes draped in a way that barely constitutes decent, headdress of spidery black tentacles… He’s seen her in a dream, a dream of death and peace.

“Hela?” says Thor at his left.

“My queen,” says Loki, and his bow is low enough for once not to be a mockery.

“Hela.” Odin does not seem pleased to see her, for all that she’s supposed to be his grandkid or something. “This does not concern you.”

“Nay, Odin All-Father, I am come to close a deal,” she says, gaze fixed on the trickster before her. “I have promised him asylum, should he please me today.”

“And what could the Liesmith possibly have to offer you?”

Loki answers that question by going to one knee, head bowed, and a familiar silver object held before him, the dagger laid across both hands in offering.

Hela hesitates, running her hand back and forth along its length, but never quite touching it. There’s a hungry look on her face, like a starving woman being offered a feast. Finally, she grasps the dagger’s hilt, and throws her head back with an ecstatic gasp as power flows from it into her.

“Ah!” she breathes. “At last.”

“Loki, by what treachery have you come by this?” asks Odin. “The blade can be wielded only by mortal hand!”

“But it is mine by right,” Hela hisses. “A piece of my power, taken from me in ages past and bound with mortal magic.”

“And what soul is trapped within?”

She smirks, and in that moment Tony can totally see how she and Loki might be related. “None other than the Lord of Hell.” She runs her fingers along the flat of the blade, and gives a satisfied shiver. “Fitting, no? He was, after all, the one who betrayed me to the mortal sorcerer. And now his kingdom is without a ruler…” From her smile, she knows exactly what she’s going to do about that.

Tony sucks in a breath, but Loki still has his head bowed to Hela and doesn’t see the sick expression he knows he has on his face. His stomach feels like a stone inside him as he thinks back over all the things that led to this moment. The knife can only be wielded by a mortal, so did Loki maneuver him into a position to stab Mephisto? He has to admit he’s impressed; get rid of an enemy by gifting him to an ally in return for a favor. So many things would have to fall perfectly into place, though—except, Loki always has a plan within a plan, and a contingency plan for when plan E fails. He has the faint memory that, back when all this started, he used to suspect everything Loki did of being part of a web of lies and plots. He can’t remember when he stopped thinking that way; was it before or after he had his dick in Loki’s ass? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He pulls himself back to the present. Hela paces forward and lifts Loki’s chin with a fingertip, to look him in the eye.

“Yes, Loki Silvertongue, this is indeed a worthy gift.”

With a wave of her hand, a parchment appears in the air, along with an old-timey quill pen. She and Loki prick their fingertips—with the silver dagger, naturally—and sign in blood.

“This shall not be the end,” Odin promises. “You will see justice, Liesmith, I will make sure of it!”

“Be silent!” Hela snaps, power seething just below the surface. And whaddaya know, Odin actually shuts the Hel up. “Helheim is a sovereign realm, and as long as Loki remains within its bounds he shall be free of your tedious torments. By ancient agreement, it has always been so.”

“As long as he remains within its bounds…” Odin says, his tone conveying exactly how likely he thinks that is… and exactly what he plans to do when he catches Loki cheating.

It’s like Odin can’t stand to stay here any longer now that he’s been outmaneuvered, so he disappears in another crack of thunder. Maybe it’s just Tony’s ears, but it doesn’t sound as impressive as his arrival. It has the ring of defeat.

Across the battlefield, Loki is standing, turning to follow Hela, but there’s a tiny hesitation in his step. It’s not quite the triumphant strut of someone who is so very done with this tiny mortal realm. Tony looks around at the stunned faces of the Avengers, X-Men, S.H.I.E.L.D…. half the heroes he knows on the eastern seaboard. It’s now or never, though, and if this is the last chance he has to say something to Loki, he’s going to do it—and screw the consequences.

He strides after Loki and catches his wrist.

“Wait,” he says, retracting his helmet.

Loki turns, and doesn’t quite look him in the eye.

“Did…” he knows what he wants to ask, but the words stick. He swallows, tries again. “Was any of it real?”

Now Loki looks at him, and it is hard to read. Regret, or maybe pity? At least it’s not naked contempt, which Tony feared the most.

“What do you think, Stark?” His voice is soft, almost as though he doesn’t know the answer himself, and that’s all Tony gets before Loki pulls his wrist gently out of Tony’s grasp, takes a step, and disappears in a twist of magic into another realm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aww, Loki, no.
> 
> That's the last full chapter. I'll be back with the epilogue tomorrow!


	24. Epilogue: Every Shadow Filled up With Doubt

## Tony

He takes Darcy to the funeral, because it’s the least he can do. Not that he puts it like that; no, he passes it off with some comment about showing up in style, but since even he knows this is not time for the Tony Fucking Stark show, he keeps his suit conservative (for him) and stands in the back with his restless hands in his pockets and hides behind his sunglasses as Darcy gives him the run-down on who’s who.

Fake-S.H.I.E.L.D. were remarkably slippery and hard to pin down on any charges, which is how come the woman with the red-streaked hair—Agent Hand, says Darcy—is standing behind and a little to the left as Senator Boynton wrings his hands and speechifies about his tragic loss. And then, right after the ceremony, before the dirt has even settled on Simon’s coffin, he’s shaking hands with the Governor of Indiana.

“…ensure that this is the last son a human father has to bury due to alien meddling in Earth affairs,” Tony hears him say.

“Your new initiative,” says the Governor, “how ready is it?”

“The battle was a set-back,” Boynton admits. “We no longer have access to S.H.I.E.L.D. resources, and my son wasn’t the only good agent we lost. We have to push back the timeline by a couple of months, but we can still announce before the election.”

Senator Weasel keeps looking around as if to spot whoever’s watching him, but never quite makes eye contact with Tony.

 _Good,_ Tony thinks. _You keep looking over your shoulder. And if you step one foot out of line, I’ll be there._

## Darcy

“Close the door, Technician Lewis.”

She does, and parks herself in the seat Agent Phil indicates. There’s a silence, as he flips through the pages of a file—her file, she realizes, catching glimpses of a couple of familiar-looking photos.

When the silence drags out, she can’t stop herself from asking, “Am I in trouble, boss?”

He looks up with that light, bland smile on his face, the one that’s the same whether he’s pissed, about to make his winning move, or realizing he’s outmaneuvered. She gets the strong feeling he’s letting her stew on purpose. Then, finally: “No, you’re just here for your debriefing. First of all, congratulations on a successful mission.”

“Mission?” The only ongoing mission she had was the Tony-spying one for fake-S.H.I.E.L.D., and she’s pretty certain by this point (as certain as she can be about anything) that Agent Phil had nothing to do with them.

“I must admit, I’m impressed.” Flick, flick through the file. “You have quite the instinct for undercover work.”

“I… don’t understand.” Actually, she’s beginning to, and she’s not sure she likes it.

“You sure about that?” He says it like it’s a test, and maybe it is. He folds his hands on the file, which lies open showing on one side a photo—one of her photos—of the gas station crime scene, and on the other an image of the car wreck where Williams died. He shouldn’t have those photos, shouldn’t know anything about either of those events, unless…

“You set me up?” She’s not really in doubt, but the question mark creeps in there with a note of anger and disbelief.

“I prefer to think of it as leveraging an asset. I needed information on the dissenting faction, but I couldn’t use any of my established agents. You wanted answers about the incident you got yourself mixed up in. I had contingency plans, of course, but you proved to be really quite resourceful. I rushed you through training and got you on a team with Agent Williams, but everything else was your own doing.”

“Coulda used one of your contingency plans when I was stewing in lockup.”

“And I would have, if necessary.” He pauses, and drops the assessing gaze for something warmer. “You’re one of mine, now, and I look after my own.”

“I’m the newest kid on the block, and you sent me after an all-powerful secret organization run by the next president of the USA!”

“I thought you could handle it. Was I wrong?”

There’s a tense pause while they stare at each other, until eventually Darcy says, “No. No, you weren’t wrong.”

“I wasn’t kidding when I said I was impressed, Lewis. You have a natural talent for this kind of thing, enough that I’m willing to overlook your fitness scores—”

“Hey! I thought I passed my fitness!”

“I’m willing to overlook your fitness scores and the fact that you dropped out of your graduate program. S.H.I.E.L.D. needs agents like you, who don’t fit the usual military profile, who think differently—”

“Are you negging me, boss? What are you saying here?”

“I’m trying to say, if you’ll let me finish, that there’s a promotion waiting for you if you want it. Junior Agent. We’ll also pay for your tuition if you want to finish your graduate studies or take on another college program.” He studies her face, and she has no idea what’s showing on it right now. “Look, don’t answer right away. I know this wasn’t what you planned to do with your life, and I’m sure Dr. Foster will be happy to have you back as her assistant. But I think you’ll be unsatisfied with that, won’t you, now that you’ve had the taste of something else.”

She studies the paper he pushes across the table. Certainly the number of zeroes in the offered salary would make her unsatisfied with what she was scraping by on before.

“Think it over, and get this back to me along with your mission report first thing Monday morning.”

She screws up her face. Oh yeah—mission reports. They’ll make her earn all those zeroes with the paperwork alone. She manages to make herself nod. “Okay, boss.”

His smile indicates that he thinks she’s already made up her mind, but he stops her as she starts to get up.

“One last thing before you go. In your opinion, how compromised is Stark?”

## Tony

“Which talk is this?”

Steve raises a quizzical eyebrow and sits down across the workbench from him.

“Is this the ‘You’re a wildcard we can’t afford to have on the team’ chat, or the ‘I’m so disappointed in you’ guilt trip?”

“Neither. Tony, I just. Help me understand, here. How much of this was planned?”

Tony gives a brittle snort of laughter. “You’ll have to ask Loki. Whatever his plans were, he never let me in on them.”

“Then what were the two of you—?”

There’s nothing to say to that, so Tony just levels a flat gaze at him and waits.

“Oh.” Beat. “Oh!” And there it is, that blush creeping up his face, which in other circumstances would merit teasing about how _adorable_ it is, but right now just makes Tony feel sick.

“Right. It’s the ‘Your filthy perversions are an affront to Jesus and apple pie’ lecture.”

“What? Give me some credit, Tony. I’m just steamed because now I owe Clint a twenty.”

He can’t quite laugh, for all that he appreciates Steve trying to lighten the mood, but he does his best to smile, and says, “Bill me.”

Steve reaches across the table and puts his hand over Tony’s to still his incessant finger-drumming. It’s a blatant ploy to reassure him that Steve’s not grossed out, or afraid to touch him, but points for effort.

“Did you trust him?”

“No. Maybe.” Deep breath. “He seemed… to be working through some stuff.” Working it out on Tony, mostly—not that he ever minded. “It seemed to be getting better.”

"And now?"

Tony sighs. That’s the billion-dollar question, isn’t it?

“How about I tell you when I figure it out?”

He turns back to the things on his workbench, not that he’s really doing anything with them, it’s just he can’t do conversation right now.

Steve nods. “Deal.”

Once Steve has gone, he sits in the workshop alone, with only the light from his arc reactor to illuminate the twisted, burned-out objects on the table in front of him. With one hand, he traces the delicate filigree on the portal device.

The clues were there all along; he was just too blinded by his obsession to put them together.

 _“Doesn’t it bother you at all that your entire Titan-busting kit came courtesy of Loki?”_ he remembers Darcy asking, and the misgivings he’d squashed back then all come flooding back now.

 _I know many paths between realms,_ Loki had said. He could rip open the fabric of spacetime with nothing more than a gesture and a word when he wanted to shove Amora through it. Why would he need a portal device? Certainly, he’d handed it over at the slightest prompting.

The magic containment glove. Was Loki even injured that time, or was the near-death fiasco staged to demonstrate that the glove could interface with Tony’s tech?

The communicator, which Loki found in Senator Boynton’s mansion, and handed to Darcy, so they’d know exactly when Thanos was landing.

The Cancerverse, and Thanos’ lack of power there, which Loki made sure Tony knew all about.

He’d reeled Tony in, let slip just enough vulnerability, and then challenged him by saying he didn’t stand a chance against Thanos. He’d acted like the dream-sharing was involuntary, when for all Tony knew he’d been projecting his memories into Tony’s brain, giving Tony what felt like insight but was actually a selected highlight reel of the things most likely to earn his sympathies. Very clever.

Just like the way he’d gotten Tony to deal with Mephisto. Made sure Tony had the blade, maneuvered him into position. He has to wonder, though, do all Loki’s plans hinge on stuff like counting on Tony running in to save him? Why all the reverse-psychology mind-games? Why not just ask?

“I would have done it anyway,” he whispers into the dark.

He imagines another version of events where he and Loki tracked down Mephisto together, Tony striking the fatal blow and handing the dagger over to Loki willingly. There was no need to bring Mephisto here and get Simon Boynton killed. A sick knot twists in his stomach. That’s on Tony as much as it is on Loki; a kid is dead because he lured the _Lord of Hell_ for god’s sake, he lured the Lord of Hell to Earth and let him loose on the population.

 _Was any of it real?_ He asked Loki before he disappeared out of Tony’s life. Any of it at all? The weird, twisted intimacy, yes, but also Loki’s ‘reluctant’ confessions. Because if someone had written a script on how to get Tony Stark to project all his own shit onto someone else, they’d start with daddy issues, progress through kidnap, torture, vengeance, a distinct lack of self-preservation, and end with an addiction to something (or someone) really, _really_ bad for you.

It's a whole lot of trouble to go through, just to get Tony Stark to feel sorry for you.

“I would have done it anyway.”

And the worst part?

He’d do it all again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it! Thank you so much for reading, commenting, and leaving kudos. I'd love to hear what you thought of the story--and also your opinions on Loki's shenanigans.

**Author's Note:**

> Here are my Tony playlist and my [Darcy playlist](http://open.spotify.com/user/1274581461/playlist/2xM2lyNC2ahSLHr91L9J0d) on Spotify, in case you're into that sort of thing.  
>    
> Come find me [on Tumblr](http://cyndisision.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
